How to Scan a Boarding Pass with Your Phone: Step by Step Guide

You no longer need to type flight numbers, airport codes and dates every time you want to log a flight. A boarding pass scanner reads the pass with your phone camera and fills in the flight for you, from a crumpled paper pass to a screenshot. This guide explains how it works and how to get a clean scan every time.

What Data Can Be Read from a Boarding Pass?

A standard boarding pass, paper or digital, carries information in two forms: printed text that people read, and a machine-readable barcode (usually PDF417 or Aztec, following the IATA BCBP standard). Here is what a scanner can pull from them:

• Flight number: for example AF 1234
• Departure and arrival airports: IATA codes such as CDG and JFK
• Date of travel: the barcode stores the day of the year, not the year, so check the year when you review the flight
• Seat assignment: for example 14A
• Cabin class: Economy, Business, and so on (the barcode holds a cabin letter whose meaning depends on the airline)
• Passenger name and booking reference (PNR): used to identify the booking

How Boarding Pass Scanning Works

FlightLog can read two things on the pass: the barcode, which holds the flight number, route, seat and booking data in a fixed structure, and the printed text, which adds details the barcode does not carry, such as times and gate. The live camera reads the barcode alone, on your phone; the printed text is read from a photo of the pass, online. Combining both is more reliable than reading either one alone, especially on a pass that is wrinkled, faded or partly hidden.

It works with airline-branded paper passes and screenshots from airline apps, as long as the barcode or the key text is visible. A PDF boarding pass is imported another way (tap Add, then Photos or files, then Import a file), and on iPhone a pass in Apple Wallet can be shared to FlightLog from Wallet's share button, when the airline allows sharing. To learn what each field means, see what every code on your boarding pass means.

Step by Step: Scanning a Boarding Pass with FlightLog

Step 1: Open the scanner

In FlightLog, choose to scan a boarding pass. The camera opens ready to read the pass. You can also pick an existing photo or screenshot from your gallery.

Step 2: Frame your boarding pass

Point the camera at the barcode or QR code of the pass, not at the whole pass: FlightLog reads it as soon as it is sharp. If the code will not scan, tap Take photo and fit the whole pass in the frame. For a digital pass on a screen, take a screenshot first and scan it from your gallery.

Step 3: Review the data

Within a few seconds FlightLog shows what it read: flight number, departure and arrival airports, date and seat, plus the cabin when the pass states it clearly. Check the details and correct anything that is wrong, especially the date.

Step 4: Save your flight

Tap Add this flight, and the flight is added to your logbook. Once it has been flown, FlightLog includes it in your statistics, with the distance flown, the time in the air, the route on your globe and its carbon footprint.

Tips for Perfect Scans

• Good lighting matters. Avoid shadows across the pass. Daylight or evenly diffused indoor light works best.
• Flatten the paper. If the pass is crumpled or folded, smooth it out before scanning.
• For a photo, include the full pass. Do not cut off the edges: the flight number and airport codes are sometimes in the corners. With the live camera, the barcode alone is enough.
• For screenshots, leave a margin. When scanning a digital pass from your gallery, do not crop too tightly around it.
• Keep the barcode sharp. The barcode is the most reliable part of the pass, so make sure it is in focus and not covered by a finger or a glare.

What About Old Boarding Passes?

If you have been saving boarding passes in a drawer or a shoe box, you can scan them one by one. Thermal paper fades over time, but a barcode that is still readable is often enough to recover the flight.

For passes that are too faded to scan, add the flight by typing its number and date. For a flight of the last five months or so, a schedule lookup fills in the airports and times. For an older flight, FlightLog suggests the route this flight number flies today and says so: check it and fill in the times yourself. You can also import a photo or a screenshot of an old booking confirmation or e-ticket (tap Add, then Photos or files), and FlightLog reads all the flights in it at once.

Other Ways to Add a Flight

Scanning is only one of the options. You can forward booking emails to your personal import address, and the flights arrive as pending flights that you confirm. You can import trips from your phone calendar, or bring in a file exported from another app, for example with the Flighty import guide.

Where Your Boarding Passes Are Stored

Boarding passes and tickets contain a passenger name and a booking reference. In FlightLog these are stored on your phone only and are never synced to the server, even when you sign in to sync your logbook. A photo of a pass is read online by a third-party service, unless you turn off Online document reading in the app.

Every scanned flight becomes a data point in your flight statistics. Download FlightLog for free and scan your first boarding pass in seconds.