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Reference guides on PNRs and GDS formats.

What Is a PNR?

A PNR, or Passenger Name Record, is the record a GDS (Global Distribution System) creates when a flight is booked. It holds the passenger names, flight segments, contact details, fare and pricing information, and any special service requests such as meals or wheelchair assistance, all tied to a six character record locator like FIWOXG or PQRSTU.

Raw PNR text is dense and specific to whichever GDS produced it, built for a reservations terminal rather than for reading. That is the gap a converter like PNRPilot closes: the same data, laid out as a normal itinerary.

Amadeus vs Sabre vs Galileo

The three systems record the same booking information in different ways:

  • Amadeus usually trails the record locator after an RP/office-id/office-id line, and passenger titles are often joined directly onto the first name, as in KHAN/AHMEDMR.
  • Sabre numbers passengers as segment.subsequence, for example 1.1LICHTMAN/MICHAL, and segments often carry a trailing /DC block for the operating carrier and ticket locator.
  • Galileo puts the locator on its own standalone *ABC123 line, and its segment lines skip the day of week token that both Amadeus and Sabre include.

Reading GDS Dates and Times

Dates appear as a day number followed by a three letter month with no separator, such as 05MAY or 15SEP, usually without a year since the year is inferred from context. Times appear in two forms: 24 hour format like 0430 for 04:30, or 12 hour format with an A or P suffix, so 655A means 06:55 and 130P means 13:30.

The detail that trips up simple parsers is that an arrival time which looks numerically earlier than the departure time does not always mean the flight lands the next day. It can just as easily mean the flight crosses into a different timezone. Getting the duration right requires knowing each airport's actual timezone, not just comparing the clock digits.