How to check PNR status of railway and airlines in India?

This post covers an important travel topic, how to check pnr status of railway or airline online in India. While this might be sounding very common to many travelers but believe me, there are some people who still do not quite know how to check pnr status of a train or a flight online.

But, before I explain the whole process in layman's language, it's important that I define what is PNR status, so here is the step by step info:

What is a PNR Status in Indian Railways?

PNR is the acronym for Passenger Name Record. As the name suggest, pnr is a unique number issued by railways the passengers. This number contains a record of the passenger's itinerary and other booking details.

Each time you make an online travel booking, a new PNR is issued. Now, when you make an online booking particularly with Indian Railways, the chances are you may get a wait listed ticket. Whether this ticket will get confirmed or not can be tracked through PNR Status. 

Indian railways update the PNR status all the time until 4 hrs to the train departure. Beyond that, the charts are prepared and only TT can tell whether there is any berth in the train to accommodate more passengers or not.

A PNR status can be any of the following :

• Confirmed - WL 
• Confirmed - CNF 
• Confirmed + RAC 
• RAC 
• RAC + WL 
• GNWL 
• General PQWL Pooled Quota 
• RLWL Remote Location 
• TQWL 
• Tatkal Waiting 
• Charting

How to check PNR Status of train online? 

The PNR Status of an Indian Train can be checked online in from several websites. The one I highly recommend and often use is http://www.indianrail.gov.in/enquiry/PNR/PnrEnquiry.html

To check the current PNR status of your journey, you need to enter the issued PNR number in the box as shown in the image below:

Screenshot from IndianRail.gov.in

After entering the 10 digit pnr number, click on submit. A new pop up will open, in this window, you will be asked to answer a question to prove you are a human not a bot trying to capture data. So answer the question correctly and hit Submit. 

Upon submission of the form, the current status of the Passenger Name Record is displayed on the next screen. The status could be shown as Confirmed, WL, RAC or anything as mentioned above.

Once the journey has been completed, the Passenger Name Record (PNR) get flushed or deleted.

PNR status in Flight

PNR status in flight is very different from railways. In railways, the status of a booking could be anything right from Confirmed to RAC. But in case of flights, you get permanent berth, there are no wait lists statuses. Instead, in flight PNR, one can check the status of following details:

• Flight Schedules (As the timings often change due to weather or other unforeseen reasons)
• Seat number
• Travel Itinerary

Above is my recent flight ticket from Mumbai to Amritsar, in the top right corner is the PNR number of my flight. Unlike railways, airlines have PNR numbers that consist of Alphabets and Digits. 

To check the PNR status, you need to follow certain steps, in this example I am going to show you the process to check PNR status of Go Air: 

• Open Goair.com
• Click on manage booking
• Now on the new screen enter the PNR number and your last name or email address you used for booking the flight

Hit retrieve booking and you will get the information displayed on the next screen. From that page passengers can modify booking details easily. I often opt for a window seat on the plane so I do use this feature a lot.

Final Thoughts

Being a Gumakkad myself, I have come across many people who are still not aware of using the resources that are available online to better the travel experience. Articles like this will certainly be beneficial for such people. Therefore, if you find this post insightful, kindly share it with your friends and families.

I wish you all a happy journey!