# IATA BCBP

> Source: https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/iata-bcbp
> research date 2026-06-03 · extracted at 2026-10-03
> Publisher: Barcoder — encyclopedia of QR, barcode and payment-code standards

Specifications:
- [Bar Coded Boarding Pass (BCBP) Implementation Guide, Version 7 — IATA, 2021](https://www.iata.org/contentassets/1dccc9ed041b4f3bbdcf8ee8682e75c4/2021_03_02-bcbp-implementation-guide-version-7-.pdf)
- [Common Use Standards — IATA](https://www.iata.org/en/programs/passenger/common-use/)
- [Boarding pass — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_pass)

## Overview

The **Bar Coded Boarding Pass (BCBP)** is the industry-standard data format that airlines encode into the 2D barcode printed on, or displayed by, a passenger's boarding pass. It is defined by **IATA Resolution 792**, which specifies "the required characteristics of the elements and format of the Bar Code on the Boarding Pass" <sup>[1][1]</sup>. The data are a fixed-and-conditional set of structured ASCII fields — passenger name, flight, seat, sequence number and so on — laid out as length-prefixed records and rendered into a barcode symbol <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

BCBP is **carrier-agnostic about symbology within a defined set**. The standard names four symbologies that may carry the data: [PDF417](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/pdf417), [Aztec](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/aztec), DataMatrix and [QR Code](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/qr-code). The default barcode on a *printed* boarding pass is [PDF417](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/pdf417); the three matrix codes ([Aztec](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/aztec), DataMatrix, [QR Code](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/qr-code)) are used for mobile (phone-displayed) boarding passes and may also appear on printed passes <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

## History

BCBP was set as an industry standard when the IATA **Passenger Service Conference of 2004** unanimously approved **Resolution 792**, and the standard was first published in **2005** <sup>[1][1], [3][3]</sup>. Its purpose was to provide a barcode solution for the electronic-ticket world and to fully replace the previous boarding-pass standard, **Resolution 722c "Automated Ticket/Boarding Pass – Version 2" (ATB2)**, which used a magnetic stripe <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

BCBP was a pillar of IATA's **"Simplifying the Business" (StB)** program. IATA's Board of Governors set a mandate that all IATA member airlines be capable of issuing BCBP by the end of 2008 and that **100% of boarding passes carry a 2D bar code by the end of 2010**; the 2008 Passenger Services Conference set a sunset date of 31 December 2010 for the change, which corresponded to eliminating magnetic stripes on boarding passes <sup>[1][1], [3][3]</sup>. The ATB2 magnetic-stripe standard expired in 2010 <sup>[3][3]</sup>. Adoption ramped quickly: from 9 BCBP-capable airlines at end-2005 to roughly 200 by end-2008 <sup>[3][3]</sup>.

Resolution 792 is maintained by IATA's BCBP group of experts and has gone through successive versions. The accompanying **Implementation Guide reached Version 7** (dated 2 March 2021); IATA notes that guide "Version 6" was skipped so the guide's number would match the current Resolution 792 version <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

## Technical specification

**One pass per passenger, up to four legs.** Before BCBP, airlines issued one boarding pass per flight leg. The BCBP format lets an airline encode either one leg or several legs of an itinerary into a single barcode; the encoding carries up to **four legs** of a journey <sup>[1][1], [6][6]</sup>.

**Field model.** Resolution 792 (Attachment A) defines the formatting of each item: alphanumeric items are usually left-justified with trailing blanks (e.g. passenger name `DESMARAIS/LUC␣␣␣`), and numeric items usually carry leading zeros (e.g. seat `001A`). Attachment C defines acceptable values and the sizes of variable-length fields <sup>[1][1]</sup>. Items fall into three classes <sup>[1][1]</sup>:

- **Mandatory items** — always populated; if unavailable at issuance they are filled with blanks so the character count stays correct.
- **Conditional items** — populated when the airline's system has them; otherwise blanked, and the conditional field's size can be shortened if trailing fields are unused.
- **Airline individual-use item** — free space for airline-proprietary data.

**Mandatory unique (per-pass) and repeated (per-leg) structure.** The barcode begins with a format code and a leg count, then a unique header block followed by a repeated per-leg block. The mandatory fixed-length layout is (lengths in bytes) <sup>[6][6]</sup>:

| Field | Len | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Format Code | 1 | always `M` <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| Number of Legs Encoded | 1 | 1–4 <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| Passenger Name | 20 | `SURNAME/FIRST` <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| Electronic Ticket Indicator | 1 | `E` distinguishes e-ticket vs ticketless product (item 253) <sup>[1][1], [6][6]</sup> |
| Operating Carrier PNR Code | 7 | the record locator <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| From City Airport Code | 3 | IATA airport code <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| To City Airport Code | 3 | IATA airport code <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| Operating Carrier Designator | 3 | IATA airline code <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| Flight Number | 5 | <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| Date of Flight | 3 | Julian day-of-year <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| Compartment Code | 1 | cabin type, not fare class (item 71); per Resolution 728 <sup>[1][1], [6][6]</sup> |
| Seat Number | 4 | e.g. `001A` <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| Check-in Sequence Number | 5 | <sup>[6][6]</sup> |
| Passenger Status | 1 | <sup>[6][6]</sup> |

**Conditional / structured-message blocks.** After the mandatory data, optional length-prefixed blocks carry conditional items (version number; field-size bytes; source of check-in, item 12; source of boarding-pass issuance, item 14; date of issue as a Julian date, item 22; baggage-tag licence-plate numbers, items 23/31/32; selectee/TSA indicator, item 18) plus an airline individual-use field and, finally, an optional **security** section <sup>[1][1]</sup>. Field-size items 6, 10 and 17 carry, in ASCII-printed hexadecimal, the byte size of the conditional structured messages that follow <sup>[1][1]</sup>. Item 18 (selectee indicator) is conditional in general but **mandatory for itineraries involving United States travel**, where it carries the TSA-defined vetting status <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

**A BCBP without personal data is still uniquely identifiable** by the combination of date of flight (Julian), operating carrier code, flight number, check-in sequence number and from-city code — which lets systems detect duplicate scans at security <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

**Symbology carriers.** The default printed-pass carrier is [PDF417](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/pdf417), chosen because it was the first open, royalty-free 2D symbology able to encode the required data, conforming to ISO/IEC 15438 <sup>[1][1]</sup>. [PDF417](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/pdf417) does not scale well for a four-leg trip with all conditional elements filled in, so the standard also allows the matrix codes <sup>[1][1]</sup>. For mobile, the three permitted matrix symbologies are [Aztec](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/aztec) (ISO/IEC 24778; ~900 alphanumeric characters in an 83×83 cell code), DataMatrix (ISO/IEC 16022; ~862 characters in 80×80), and [QR Code](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/qr-code) (ISO/IEC 18004; ~938 characters); matrix codes fit phone screens better than the linear-stacked [PDF417](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/pdf417) <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

## Use cases

- **Boarding and check-in across four channels** — desk, self-service kiosk, web, and mobile; a BCBP can be obtained through any channel <sup>[1][1]</sup>.
- **Security checkpoints, lounge and fast-track access** — third parties scan the barcode for access control; strict format compliance matters because interline partners and third-party operators must be able to read the data <sup>[1][1]</sup>.
- **Interline / through-check** — one barcode encodes several operational legs, including funnel flights identified by a single member flight number <sup>[1][1]</sup>.
- **Duplicate-pass detection** — the unique field combination flags a boarding pass scanned twice at security <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

## Implementations

- **`georgesmith46/bcbp`** — JavaScript, MIT. `encode()`/`decode()` for BCBP; supports any number of legs (documented to BCBP version 6). ~62 stars; last pushed 2024 <sup>[7][7]</sup>.
- **`ncredinburgh/iata-parser`** — Java, Apache-2.0. Parser for the boarding-pass format described in IATA Resolution 792. ~33 stars; last pushed 2020 <sup>[7][7]</sup>.
- **`ThatDesert/bcbp`** — Python, GPL-3.0. Decodes IATA-standard boarding passes (`pip install bcbp`). ~7 stars; last pushed 2022 <sup>[7][7]</sup>.

## Comparison

BCBP is unusual among the standards in this encyclopedia because it **defines a data format independently of its carrier symbology** and then permits four symbologies. The practical split is: **[PDF417](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/pdf417) for paper** (default; open, royalty-free, dense for a linear-stacked code) versus **[Aztec](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/aztec) / DataMatrix / [QR Code](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/qr-code) for phone screens** (square matrix codes that render and scan better on a backlit display) <sup>[1][1]</sup>. This is the inverse of the [AAMVA DL/ID](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/aamva-dl) driver-licence standard, which mandates exactly one symbology ([PDF417](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/pdf417)) and forbids the others. Unlike a payment QR or a verifiable-credential format, BCBP carries **cleartext structured data with no mandatory cryptographic protection of the payload** — the optional security section exists but is not always populated <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

## Fun facts

- A printed boarding-pass barcode can be read by ordinary barcode apps to reveal the passenger name, route and the 6-character **PNR (record locator)**; combined with a surname, that locator can be enough to log into an airline's "manage my booking" site <sup>[3][3]</sup>.
- A widely-cited 2020 incident: a posted photo of a boarding pass belonging to former Australian PM **Tony Abbott** led, via the airline's booking site, to exposure of his passport number and internal PNR remarks — illustrating that the barcode payload is not private data <sup>[3][3]</sup>.

## Status

**Active and effectively universal.** BCBP is the global standard for boarding-pass barcodes; the magnetic-stripe predecessor (ATB2) expired in 2010, and more than 200 airlines use BCBP <sup>[3][3]</sup>. Resolution 792 continues to be maintained and versioned by IATA's BCBP experts, with the Implementation Guide at Version 7 (2021) <sup>[1][1]</sup>.

## Sources

[1]: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/1dccc9ed041b4f3bbdcf8ee8682e75c4/2021_03_02-bcbp-implementation-guide-version-7-.pdf
[2]: https://www.iata.org/en/programs/passenger/common-use/
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_pass
[6]: https://javadude.wordpress.com/2017/10/07/whats-in-my-boarding-pass-barcode/
[7]: https://github.com/georgesmith46/bcbp

1. [Bar Coded Boarding Pass (BCBP) Implementation Guide, Version 7](https://www.iata.org/contentassets/1dccc9ed041b4f3bbdcf8ee8682e75c4/2021_03_02-bcbp-implementation-guide-version-7-.pdf) — IATA, 2021
2. [Common Use Standards](https://www.iata.org/en/programs/passenger/common-use/) — IATA
3. [Boarding pass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_pass) — Wikipedia, 2026
6. [What's in my boarding pass barcode?](https://javadude.wordpress.com/2017/10/07/whats-in-my-boarding-pass-barcode/) — The JavaDude Weblog, 2017
7. [bcbp — Encoding/decoding library for the IATA Bar Coded Boarding Pass](https://github.com/georgesmith46/bcbp) — georgesmith46 (GitHub), 2024

## Deployments

_No country reports mention this standard by name._

## Regions / aggregations not mapped to a single country

- Universal