Amadeus PNR Converter: Step-by-Step Guide

Amadeus is one of the three major GDS platforms used by travel agencies worldwide, and its PNR format has its own quirks. This guide breaks down exactly how to read an Amadeus PNR line by line, and how to convert it into something a client can actually understand.

What Makes Amadeus PNRs Distinctive

Amadeus PNRs typically start with an RP/ line showing the office identifier, followed by passenger name lines, then numbered flight segment lines. Compared to Sabre or Galileo, Amadeus tends to use slightly different spacing and status code placement, which is why a converter built for one GDS doesn't always work cleanly on another.

Anatomy of an Amadeus PNR

Here's a real-world style example:

RP/LON1A2345/LON1A2345
1.SMITH/JOHN MR  2.SMITH/SARAH MRS
3 BA 284 H 15JUL 2*LHRJFK HK2 1120A 215P 15JUL E
4 BA 179 T 25JUL 5*JFKLHR HK2 745P 750A 26JUL E

Line 1 — Office Identifier

RP/LON1A2345/LON1A2345 identifies the booking office (a London-based Amadeus terminal, in this example). This isn't the passenger's reference number — it's an internal agency identifier.

Line 2 — Passengers

1.SMITH/JOHN MR and 2.SMITH/SARAH MRS list the two passengers on the booking, each numbered and formatted as LASTNAME/FIRSTNAME with a title.

Lines 3-4 — Flight Segments

Each numbered line after the passengers represents one flight:

Common Amadeus Status Codes

Amadeus uses the same general GDS status codes as other systems:

• HK — Holds Confirmed (booking is confirmed)
• HL — Holds Waitlisted (passenger is on the waitlist)
• UN / UC — Unable to confirm
• NN — Pending, needs confirmation

For a full breakdown of every status code, see our complete PNR status code guide.

Why Converting Amadeus PNRs Manually Is Slow

Manually decoding an Amadeus PNR means looking up airport codes, calculating real flight durations across time zones, and formatting everything into readable sentences — for every single booking. For an agency processing dozens of PNRs a day, this adds up to hours of repetitive work that a converter tool handles in seconds.

Converting an Amadeus PNR in Seconds

Instead of manually decoding each line, paste the raw PNR text into a converter like PNRGenius, which auto-detects the Amadeus format and instantly outputs a clean itinerary — with correct flight durations, resolved airport names, and properly formatted passenger details.

Amadeus-Specific Formatting Quirks Agents Run Into

The RP/ line at the top of an Amadeus PNR actually carries more information than it looks like at first glance. It shows two office identifiers separated by a slash — the first is the office currently responsible for the booking, and the second is the office that originally created it. When both halves match, the PNR hasn't changed hands. When they differ, it means another agency or a different office within the same agency has since taken ownership of the booking — useful to know before you start editing or ticketing something you don't actually control.

Amadeus also uses a special line called ARNK ("Arrival Not Known") to mark a gap between two flight segments that isn't a flight at all — a surface sector, a ferry crossing, or an overland transfer the passenger arranges independently. An ARNK line carries no airline code, flight number, or status, which trips up converters that expect every line between the passenger names and the pricing data to be a bookable segment.

4 BA 284 H 15JUL 2*LHRJFK HK2 1120A 215P 15JUL E
5 ARNK
6 AF 1780 Y 18JUL 3*CDGLHR HK2 630P 705P 18JUL E

How SSRs, OSI Lines, and Multiple Passengers Change the Raw Text

A simple one-passenger, one-segment PNR is the easiest case to read. Real-world bookings are rarely that clean. Add a second or third passenger and a couple of special service requests, and the raw text grows considerably:

1.SMITH/JOHN MR  2.SMITH/SARAH MRS  3.SMITH/EMMA MISS
4 BA 284 H 15JUL 2*LHRJFK HK3 1120A 215P 15JUL E
5 SSR WCHR BA HK1 15JUL LHRJFK/P3
6 SSR VGML BA HK1 15JUL LHRJFK/P1
7 OSI BA CTCT 442071234567/P1

Notice the flight segment status is now HK3 — confirmed for all three passengers together, not a separate status per person. The special service request (SSR) lines that follow are tied back to a specific traveler using a passenger reference like /P3, and to a specific segment. WCHR is a wheelchair request, VGML a vegetarian meal request — both are standard IATA-defined SSR codes used the same way across Amadeus, Sabre, Galileo, and Worldspan, even though the exact placement and punctuation on the line differs slightly between systems. The OSI (Other Service Information) line carries free-text information, like a contact phone number, that doesn't require airline action.

The practical problem for anyone reading this by hand: as passenger count and SSR/OSI lines grow, it becomes genuinely difficult to keep track of which request belongs to which traveler on which flight — especially on a family booking with wheelchair, meal, and infant requests mixed together. A converter that correctly parses passenger references does this matching automatically; reading it manually means cross-referencing numbers line by line.

Amadeus vs. Sabre vs. Galileo: The Same Segment, Three Ways

The underlying booking data is identical across GDS platforms, but the raw text layout is not. Here's the same confirmed London–New York segment as it would typically appear in each system:

If you regularly handle PNRs from more than one GDS, it's worth memorizing which system you're looking at before you start manually converting times — assuming AM/PM formatting on a Sabre or Galileo PNR (or vice versa) is one of the fastest ways to get a departure or arrival time wrong.

Common Copy-Paste Mistakes From the Amadeus Terminal

• Cutting off the RP/ header line. Some agents copy starting from the passenger line and skip the office identifier line entirely — harmless for a converter, but it removes useful context if you ever need to check which office owns the booking.
• Copying a fare quote (FXP) display instead of the PNR itself. A fare quote screen can look superficially similar to a PNR display, but it contains pricing breakdowns, not segment data — pasting it into a converter expecting a PNR produces garbage output.
• Losing line wrapping in remote desktop sessions. Agents working through a Citrix or RDP connection to their Amadeus terminal sometimes find that long segment lines wrap onto a second line when copied, splitting a single flight segment across two lines of pasted text.
• Dropping the leading passenger number. Trimming what looks like "extra" formatting (the 1. before a name) can make it harder for any parser — human or automated — to tell where the passenger list ends and the segment list begins.
• Mixing tabs and spaces. Some terminal emulators substitute tabs for the fixed-width spacing Amadeus uses natively, which can misalign columns when the text is pasted somewhere that doesn't preserve tab width.

Troubleshooting an Amadeus PNR That Won't Convert Cleanly