Documents & terminology
Airline confirmation number
Confirmation number, booking reference, record locator and PNR usually mean the same six characters — and none of them is your ticket number. Where to find yours, and which one an airline actually wants.
Published 7 September 2026 · Updated 7 September 2026
An airline confirmation number is the short code that retrieves your booking. It is also called a booking reference, a record locator, a reservation code and a PNR, and for practical purposes those are the same thing: six alphanumeric characters that, with your surname, pull up the reservation.
Six characters, uppercase, something like X7K2QP. The format is consistent across essentially every
airline because it was designed to be read aloud over a telephone in the 1960s and never needed to
change.
Where to find it
- The confirmation email sent when you booked — usually near the top, labelled “Confirmation”, “Booking reference” or “Record locator”
- The airline’s app or Manage Booking page
- Your boarding pass, generally in small print
- A baggage tag, which is one reason not to photograph them and post them publicly
- The travel agent or booking site, if you booked indirectly — with the caveat below
Why you might have more than one
This is where most confusion starts. Book through an agent or a booking site and you can end up holding three different codes:
| Code | Whose system | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Airline record locator | The operating airline | Check-in, seat selection, calling the airline |
| GDS record locator | Amadeus, Sabre or Travelport | Agent-side changes |
| Agency booking number | Expedia, a travel agent, etc. | Contacting the agency |
If an airline tells you your confirmation number is not recognised, you are almost certainly quoting the agency’s number rather than the airline’s. The one printed next to the airline’s name on your itinerary is normally the one they want.
On a journey involving more than one airline, you may also hold a separate reference with each operating carrier — see airline codes explained for how marketing and operating carriers differ, and use the airline code lookup to work out which carrier a flight number belongs to.
It is not your ticket number
The distinction matters when something goes wrong.
The confirmation number identifies the reservation: who is booked on which flights. The
e-ticket number identifies the ticket: proof the fare was paid. It is 13 digits, beginning with
the airline’s three-digit accounting code — 125 for British Airways, 176 for Emirates, 001 for
American.
You can hold a confirmation number without a ticket ever having been issued. That happens with a held fare, an agent booking not yet ticketed, or a payment that failed. The reservation is real and retrievable; it is also going to expire. If you are chasing a refund or an involuntary reroute, the ticket number is what the airline works from, not the confirmation number.
Full detail in e-ticket number explained and flight reservation vs ticket.
Treat it as semi-public
A confirmation number is an identifier, not a password. Combined with a surname it grants access to a reservation — which is why it appears on baggage tags and why a photo of your boarding pass posted publicly is a genuinely bad idea.
Airlines have added protections over the years, but the underlying design assumes the code is semi-public. Treat a picture of it roughly the way you would treat a picture of your home address.
If you have lost it
- Search your email for the airline’s name, or for “confirmation”, “booking reference” or “record locator”
- Check the airline’s app — bookings are often attached to your frequent-flyer account automatically
- Use “find my booking” on the airline’s site, which usually accepts surname plus email or frequent-flyer number
- Call the airline with your name, route and travel date; they can find it
- Ask the agency, if you booked through one
The reservation does not depend on you having the code. It is a lookup key, and the airline has other ways to find the record.
Why a sample itinerary has no confirmation number
If you generate a specimen itinerary — for planning, training or a mock-up — it has no confirmation number, and it should not have one.
The whole meaning of the code is “retrieve this record”. Where no booking exists there is nothing to
retrieve, so any six characters printed in that box are a claim that fails the moment anyone types
them in. The generator on this site prints SAMPLE — NOT ISSUED in that field for exactly that
reason, and will not produce a plausible-looking code.
That costs nothing if you are planning a trip, and removes the only reason to use such a document dishonestly. See PNR and booking reference explained.