Understanding PNR Status And Train Ticket Booking In India

by Guest blogger

This is a guest post by Nisha Pandey.

There is no way to deny the fact that India is beautiful. Every single person that visited will tell you that and there are definitely so many places to visit. If you take a look at what tourists are saying, you will immediately notice that most recommend you take the train so that you can experience the wonderful landscape of the country.

The problem is that travelling by train is quite complex in India. There are millions of people that use the Indian Railways every single day. Booking a ticket in advance becomes a necessity for all citizens and especially for tourists that do not understand the current system. Before you travel to the country, if you want to experience travelling and majestic landscapes, you need to know about PNR status and how to use it to your advantage.

What Is PNR?

You will hear about PNR enquiry a lot but most people have no idea what it is since it is not as important as it is in India. Whenever referring to the travelling industry, PNR stands for “Passenger Name Record”. It is basically a record that is put into a CRS (computer reservation system) database, which contains passenger itinerary. PNR was initially used by airlines that had to exchange information about reservation when passengers had to use flights from many airlines in order to reach a final destination (known as interlining).

In India, the PNR status is a lot more necessary when referring to railway tickets. This is due to the constant growth in the number of people that need a ticket. The PNR code is made out of 10 digits and it is created at the moment of booking or reserving a train ticket. This code can be used by a person that knows it in order to find out details about the ticket that was reserved or booked.

What PNR Status Checking Tools Are Available?

Because of the fact that people want to make sure that their ticket is confirmed, they ended up travelling to railway stations constantly, until the confirmation was noticed according to PNR status. As you can easily imagine, this caused a huge problem since there were too many people waiting in line in train stations.
While it is quite obvious that you can check the status of PNR in any railway station, it is also easy to notice that this can cause a lot of problems, especially for tourists since they need some other way to check PNR as they might not even be in the country at the time of booking a ticket.

The good news is that the Indian Railways found various ways to help customers that wanted to know information about their assigned PNR. Besides the railway station trip, you can also:

1. Use A Mobile Phone

You can either text for PNR status update or make a call. 4 numbers are available at the moment: 9773300000, 58888, 5676747 and 139. Only the first one is toll free if calling from within the country. 139 is preferred though because you can easily learn about PNR status by entering your 10 digits code since an IVRS service is attached. Also, when living in one of the 4 metro areas, it is possible to dial 139 and then directly add the PNR number and you will receive status updates.

The mobile phone can also be used in order to sign up to mobile alerts. You can do that by contacting the mobile phone provider. If you own a smartphone, you can use mobile apps in order to book tickets but in most cases there are limitations. Checking PNR status through applications is not usually recommended as a website offering such services is a lot easier.

2. Using PNR Status Sites

The Indian Railways tried to come to the aid of those that wanted to check the status of their PNR number so they created a site, www.irctc.co.in. All that a visitor needs to do is open the address in a browser and head over and create an account. In addition, the website has more information about various other facts that might be of interest for railway travelers.

The problem with the site was the fact that too many started to use it and during rush hour periods, the web site would go down. That is why the create account option was implemented since many were abusing the system, checking way too often.

An alternative appeared as various touring operators and independent sites started to offer free PNR status checks. Tourists and Indian citizens can use those sites as well. All that is necessary is adding the 10 digits PNR number and a report will be offered.

About the author
Nisha Pandey is a well known writer who has covered a wide array of subjects so far. She writes on important and useful topics like PNR status of railway and PNR enquiry which has helped her to garner a huge reader base. You can also post your article as Guest Post - Click Here for Details.