When you book an airline ticket, you’re issued a PNR (passenger name record), sometimes referred to as a record locator or confirmation code. This is typically a six digit code that consist either exclusively of letters, or of a combination of letters and numbers.
Along those lines, I recently issued a ticket for myself that had the funniest letter combination I’ve ever seen, so I wanted to talk about that in a bit more detail.
In this post:
Airline PNRs are mostly “censored”
Airline PNRs are randomly generated by the reservations system, though as you might expect, there are some combinations of letters that aren’t allowed, to avoid potentially offensive record locators.
Several years ago, I met someone who worked at Sabre (one of the big travel distribution platforms) decades ago. One of her first jobs at the company was to create the list of letter combinations that the system shouldn’t generate. She recalled being horrified by the task, and having to come up with every cuss word, slang, etc., that shouldn’t be included. I imagine at this point this is all a lot more automated.
But there’s a reason you’ll never find a confirmation code that has the word “f***” or “c***” or “j***” in it. I will say, I’ve seen people use photoshop or text editing to make it appear like they got an offensive confirmation code, but that’s the extent of it — it’s rarely true.
My funny airline confirmation code
Over the years, I don’t recall ever having a PNR that was particularly strange or entertaining. That’s fair enough — given the “blocks” in place on certain letter combinations, most people will never see anything even bordering on offensive.
However, I recently issued a ticket, and it had the confirmation code FFCKME, which made me chuckle (and don’t worry, I’ve since canceled the ticket, so there’s no identifying information associated with the record).
I think that’s about as close as you’ll get to an “offensive” record, since replacing that “F” with a “U” would definitely make it onto the “banned” PNR list. It’s one thing if the PNR just had “FFCK” in it, but that combined with “ME,” gave me a good laugh.
Bottom line
It’s not a coincidence that you’ll rarely see an offensive airline PNR, since most “naughty” words are restricted. However, once in a while something slips through the cracks, or you’re a letter off from a funny code. That happened to me for the first time, for a ticket I recently booked.
So I’m curious — what’s the funniest airline PNR you’ve ever seen?
I helped a customer whose PNR was “ZEPHIR” which was just awesome.
CUCKOL
Ethiopian airlines
When I worked at TWA reservations. There was an entry where we could change a record locator. I forgot the word it spelled. But we had to change it.
LOLBIG
Well there is a PC12 registered OH-FUK on the Finnish register which is a regular visitor to the UK.Not a PNR but still funny.
MY PNR was BUTTWYP
No it was not PNR have 5 or 6 characters
What’s the swear word beginning with J?? I’ve never heard of one before
jizz
Did you mean fist...
I once had an AA PNR that was TEXXUS
And that’s fun because…?
I had MADMAN for a client on AA once. So far nothing in my 25 years in the travel business has topped that.
You should tell your friend she missed one. Had a very andry passenger on the planr who wanted the name of the gate agent as he saw on his ticket the PNR of RETARD. He was PISSED ! (Hope your friend got that 6 letter combo) No explaining of the random assigning of a PNR code would calm him down. Didn't know the gate agents name so gave him the general customer portal to file a complaint.
Not true of course…
Does that PNR come with a complimentary SSSS?
I recently had Q2POOP on Qatar and then when I tried to get seats it replied "Unsanitary command"
I had SABRE issue a Victor Delta Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo
Truly !!!
Fake news. The last 4 letters is a hardcoded blocked sequence.
I once had a colleague's surname as my PNR.
If anyone gets TIMDUN on their Delta ticket, I'd go buy a Powerball right away.
I love the blog, but this is the first time it’s made me laugh out loud. Thanks for sharing.
I once received a 6 letter confirmation @ a travel agency years ago and the reservation agent bust out laughing when she shared it
#SHYASS
I had MILERS on an award ticket once. Sadly, in the end the itinerary didn't work for me and I eventually had to cancel it.
Had a passenger once with TUCHIT.
I always wanted a phone number that spelled something. Decades ago, my new landline spelled out 4GAYSEX. This newly single heterosexual never gave that version out.
You could have sold that to an organization willing to pay top dollar. That was a missed opportunity.
Take a few letters out of COCK SACK and you get COCSAC. I still have the printout!
Long ago when I ran some student travel agency branches, we used to ask our new hires to look up city availability between Fresno and Fukuoka. Always good for a chuckle!
My company assigns Active Directory usernames based on last name and initial. A new hire with the last name Chin and a first name starting with K was rightly angry when his Active Directory username was given to him. This is what happens when you offshore your access management team. A local admin would have seen this and used our alternate format.
This is amazing!
I booked a Ferry from Dar to Zanzibar once and the identifier they generated for me was DIES, which did not make me feel good.
Maybe not funny but the day we took delivery of our Audi RS3 we ordered McDonald’s on their app and the code for pickup was RS33
One that had slipped thru the cracks of the SABRE algorithm was “NAZZIS”, which by a miracle of odds our airline issued to a sweet little old lady - who was a Holocaust survivor. We had Sabre put it on the banned list the next day.
That's true - I was the Sabre system in that fish tale
Oddly appropriate given what’s going on in Gaza right now!
Travel agent here. My funniest PNR was "SEXXED".
I’ll see your FFCKME and raise you with some city SOMCTY and joker JQEKKR.
Not PNR, but I've had order confirmations or captchas of:
2FKMAN
GAYJO
SEXJK
I have a "must complete a captcha" alarm clock to wake me up. I screenshot some of the funny ones.
When I flew Fukuoka to Miyazaki the itinerary header was FUKKMI
Just flew Alaska on May 10th with PNR NAZZIS
Lol, that's hilarious!
We had a pax named Pamela Chu.
The boarding pass places the last name first. It spells out a profane word in Spanish.
Chupamela is profane? Really? Wow your s$x life been dull :)
Qantas recently gave me a PNR with 6KBOMB. Nice!
F(ist)FCKME hahaha this will have huge audience between the geis
I worked for Navitaire for many years and early in my career (2002) we got a complaint from then-client JetBlue about a RECLOC reading "URDEAD".
At that time the offensive and potentially offensive words were entered manually into the back-coding of the system and I remember the scramble to revamp some things internally....
HDLBTC
(if you know, you know)
Someone had the same PNR as my last name, and it caused some confusions.
My last name is Gruell, and once I flew out of JFK to AMS, and the Delta check-in agent totally lost it, because she typed my name in the PNR field, and apparently there was a match! She didn't understand why I was at the airport, because 'my' flight was departing from BOS, the next week, and the destination is San...
Someone had the same PNR as my last name, and it caused some confusions.
My last name is Gruell, and once I flew out of JFK to AMS, and the Delta check-in agent totally lost it, because she typed my name in the PNR field, and apparently there was a match! She didn't understand why I was at the airport, because 'my' flight was departing from BOS, the next week, and the destination is San Diego. I was shocked, and had no idea what could have gone wrong. It took 2-3 minutes, she even called for the station manager, then they found the mistake, that my last name was typed in as a PNR.
Thanks for sharing. Some might complain that it’s a slow day that you make a post about this, but I got a good laugh and appreciate this type of content.
Sorry to be naive: what’s J***?
Hint: rhymes with rizz...
Jazz?
Jerk