What you never knew about your boarding pass

HOW much attention have you paid to those numbers and letters on your boarding pass? You may be surprised to find out what they really mean.

HOW much attention have you paid to the series of numbers and letters on your boarding pass?

There are, of course, the obvious details such as passenger name, seat, destination, terminal, boarding gate and flight number.

However, depending on the country where your boarding pass is issued, there could also be less obvious snippets of information marked on the ticket that could save you time and hassle during your trip.

That’s according to UK discount flights website Globe Hunters, who have revealed what some of the lesser seen codes mean.

Here are some of the codes you don’t often hear about:

PRN reference: This is a reference code that’s unique to you, called your Passenger Name Record. It’s a six-digit alphanumeric code.

Sequence: This is the order in which you checked in to your flight, e.g. if your sequence number is 066 you’re the 66th person to check in.

Boarding door: Have you noticed this, which tells you whether to board the plane from the front or rear?

SSSS: It’s your lucky day, this means you’ve been selected for extra security checks. Secondary Security Screening Selection picks passengers either at random or due to red flags, such as buying a one-way ticket with cash.

Boarding pass tips and tricks. Picture: Globe Hunters

‘YOUR BOARDING PASS CONTAINS A LOT OF DETAIL’

Frequent flyer Steve Hui, CEO of iflyflat.com.au, has previously warned about how boarding passes can contain much more information than you may think.

In an experiment, he used an image of a ticket posted by a Virgin Australia passenger, who was flying codeshare on Delta Airlines, to see how much he could find out about the person.

He jumped on to the Delta website to see what would come up, and under “Manage My Booking” all that was needed was a passenger name and an E-Ticket number or booking reference, in order to see all of their details.

This passenger hid her full name but left the barcode in full view. Picture: Steve Hui

A lot of information could be accessed on Delta’s website. Picture: Steve Hui

“People with malicious minds could use that information to potentially cancel or change your flights, change your seat or cause other issues,” he said.

Even worse is what can come up on a barcode, anyone can use a barcode reader to find out all your information.

So make it your mission not to share your boarding pass details.

Mr Hui decided to see how far I could go with this image. Picture: Steve Hui

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