I know the OP want counterintuitive codes, but I still love Sioux City’s - SUX
For reasons I don’t want to get into, North American airports were not allowed to have codes beginning with certain letters until fairly recently. Those letters include “N” (hence EWR [Newark], BNA [Nashville]), etc.), “K” (hence MCI [Kansas City], TYS [Knoxville], etc.), and “W” (hence DCA [Washington National], IAD [Washington Dulles], IPT {Williamsport], AVP [Willkes-Barre], etc.) It had to do with those letters being reserved for radio stations, I think.
Ed
N prefixes were originally reserved for Navy bases.
If you want to fly from Fresno Air Terminal to Fukuoka, Japan, your ticket will call you a FAT-FUK.
Right. When first built, to take DC’s international traffic, Dulles was DCI, but that sounded too much like DCA to be safe.
Let me guess: not only is this one intuitive, it’s also descriptive?
Off-topic a bit. As a kid I tried to pronounce Sioux something like sigh-youx-shus, so when I heard it pronounce Sue I didn’t have a clue what they were on about. Then I met a gal named Siouxzee and was sure her parents were weird.
Had the same problem with segue. It was Seeg unil I was in my late 20’s.
Okay. Back to the airports. I haven’t tried to find one, but if there’s an airport labeled AIR, wouldn’t that be like Miami calling itself The U?
WIBD!
Another one that bothers me a bit is BTV, for Burlington International Airport in Vermont. I keep thinking it should be BVT, given as the state code for Vermont is VT!
Yeah, I was making reservations on-line a while back and accidentally typed “KCI” instead of “MCI” and almost booked a flight to Indonesia! 