Passenger Name Record

MH370 DECODED
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Passenger Name Record

Malaysia Airlines recorded information about every passenger who had obtained a Ticket for flight MH370. The information forms a Passenger Name Record (PNR) which was stored electronically in a database.

The Passenger Manifest for flight MH370 should be a list of every person who boarded the aircraft for the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on Saturday, 8 March 2014.

Malaysia Airlines released a Passenger Manifest at 7:20 pm on Saturday, 8 March 2014 after attempts had been made to contact next-of-kin. This manifest listed passengers by Name, Nationality and Age on lines numbered from 1 to 227. The Name record was formatted Family Name/First Names and in many instances included a Title with no separation between names or a title.

This list was subsequently re-issued on Thursday, 10 April 2014 with minor changes, including the removal of Titles.

A different list was circulated in Beijing. This version of a Passenger Manifest for flight MH370 lists passengers by name, with each name separated, nationality as a code or abbreviation, date of birth instead of age, passport number, and two other columns, on lines numbered from 1 to 227. The document is written in a combination of English and Chinese characters but the page header includes MH370, API and 227. The API is Advance Passenger Information which is collated for legal, rather than operational, reasons. The number 227 refers to the total number of passengers. For privacy reasons, a person's date of birth or passport number would not normally be made public, so the Passenger Manifests released officially in Malaysia did not include those details.

None of the above lists included seat allocations. This was provided first by a Passenger Seating Plan dated 1 May 2014 prepared by Malaysia Airlines and released by the Ministry of Transport (Malaysia). This version contained formatting errors.

A revised and improved version of the passenger Seating Plan was released on 5 May 2014.

From the information presented in each of these documents we can compile a list of data items which Malaysia Airlines must have retained as part of the Passenger Name Record for each ticket holder:-

  1. Flight Number, Date and Time
  2. Departure and Destination airports
  3. Passenger name and title
  4. Passenger date of birth
  5. Contact telephone number
  6. Passport Number
  7. Nationality
  8. Seat Allocation and Class
Definitions
TICKET
Either a document called "Passenger ticket and Baggage Check" or an Electronic Ticket, which we or our Authorised Agents have issued to you.
ELECTRONIC TICKET
An Itinerary/Receipt, Electronic Coupon and boarding document we have issued to you.
ELECTRONIC COUPON
An electronic Flight Coupon for an Electronic Ticket held in our computer database.
Source: MAS General Conditions of Carriage, Malaysian Airline System Berhad, 1 September 2012
Passenger Name Record (PNR)
Passenger Name Records (PNR) are collected by airlines solely for their business purposes. PNR contain information about bookings made which can include as little as a name, an itinerary and a ticket indicator. Accuracy is not guaranteed and PNR can contain sensitive personal data
Source: API-PNR Toolkit, IATA
Manifest
A list of people and goods carried on a ship or plane.
Source: Cambridge Dictionary


See also: Passenger Manifests