The record locator typically appears on the itinerary provided to the passenger, and may be described as a confirmation number, reservation number, confirmation code, booking reference, booking code, or vendor locator, or other description, depending on the reservation system.
When a reservation is made, a passenger name record (PNR) is created in the computer reservation system (CRS) used by the person making the booking, and the CRS will automatically generate a record locator for the PNR.
For example, a reservation for passenger traveling from London to Paris on Air France returning BA booked through AF will reside in one PNR in the Amadeus system with just one record locator because both airlines use Amadeus for reservations.
Should a record locator fail to be passed between two systems the PNR can still be retrieved using flight number/date and name, or the ticket number.
In the past, the Reservec 2 system had eight character record locators in the form xxnnnnxx where x was a letter and n a decimal digit.