I think that they try to make FAA desigations for airports come close to the name.
LAX = Los Angeles International
LAS = Las Vegas (McCarran)
SAN = San Diego (Lindbergh)
WJF = Lancaster (General William J. Fox)
MSY = New Orleans (kinda sounds like Moisant, the former name of the airport)
FAT = Fresno (Fresno Air Terminal)
On the other hand, some airport designations have nothing to do with the name. For example,
L71 = California City Municipal Airport
I think the reason for the three-letter designators goes back to when they used teletypes. “LAX” takes less time to type, less bandwidth on the telephone lines (no digital cable back then!), and less space on the paper punch tapes that were used to send messages and on the paper the messages were printed out on (no CRT monitors back then either).
MPSIMS: My dad was in the FAA in the 1970s and into the 1990s. When I was a kid he showed me how you you could make a bell ring in the teletype by punching CNTL-G. I used to make simple songs like “Jingle Bells” and “Mary had a little lamb” by punching bells and spaces and then playing the paper tape (not transmitting!).
I remember back in the 70s there was another airport in Orlando, but the bigger jets went into (what was then called) McCoy. My guess is that once an airport gets a designation, it keeps it forever unless the airport is closed as well as replaced.
No gain at all, and a lot of confusion since the three character code is how many airports are referred to by people who work in the air industry.
BTW, my mom worked in reservations for AA for years. She told me that the code for Nashville is BNA. There was some good reason but her co-workers called it “Banana” airport.
I thought that at one time “X” was the designation for an international airport. Granted, it’s not on EVERY international airport, but it’s on some.
I could swear I read this when my friend was in flight attendant training.
As others have noted, many names are based on historical airport monikers and they stick even when the airport changes its name. And I could swear that all Canada airports have (or used to have) a common letter to designate that they’re not in the U.S.
Cranky, you’re right about the Canadian airports, they tend to start with ‘Y’. Mom also mentioned that. (I think I’ve heard that they stopped that as they were running out of usable airport codes for Canada) YVR - Vancouver
However, I don’t know about the “X” thing for international airports. I know my airport (DFW) and Houston Intercontinental (HOU) are both international airports, and surely either JFK or LaGuardia (LGA) (or both) are international.
Interestingly, some of the Y codes are for airports not in Canada. Most of these have names starting with Y, but there are some odd exceptions, such as YIP for Detroit/Willow Run.
From http://travelsucks.com we have a list of Canadian airport codes; some do not begin with Y. Most of those that do not, start with X or Z, but there is a DUQ for “Duncan/Quam, BC”. Is there a code for every airstrip in the country, no matter how obscure?
It looks like most of the major cities in the world have airport codes that approximate the name of the city or possibly the name of the airport.
My hunch is correct: Ho Chi Minh City’s airport code is still SGN. And it’s nice to know that you can scribble PZH on a baggage tag and have it go to Zhob, Pakistan…
Regarding MIA, it is the first three letters of the city’s name, as well as the abbreviation of the official name of the airport, Miami International Airport. What other airports can say this?
And yes, I have not only had luggage, but items inside my shaving kit, inside my luggage, go missing all by themselves. Funny how that happens down here, huh? Too close to the Bermuda Triangle, must be.
There aren’t all that many codes that end in X. Among the top 100 airports in the U.S., only 4 end in X, and in two of them (JAX and PHX) the X is not at all mysterious.
Regarding the difficulty of changing identifier if the airport changes names, it would be ridiculously difficult. You’d have to change:
All maps, charts, publications, guides, etc.
the baggage handling computer system
ticket reservation system
fixes programmed into GPS receivers and other navigational equipment aboard each plane
flight planning software for pilot use
flight planning software linking ATC facilities
programming within ATC radars (that automates interfacility stuff)
Just to name a few. And this would all have to be done virtually instantly for it to all work out right. In the aviation world, airports are generally know BY their identifier, not their name. The identifier is what’s important to the “system” (meaning everything from the computers to the pilots to anybody involved), not the name. They could change the name every week and it wouldn’t make that big of a difference. But change the identifier, and now you’ve screwed everything up.
Same reason you don’t change your social security number if you change your name. That code is called an identifier - it identifies the airport for all time.
Yep. The one I fly out of most often is 05C, which stands for “Griffith-Merrillville Airport”. Originally they probably tried to make the identifier have some relation to the name of the airport, but nowadays, especially if you’re talking about a small airport, it could be anything.
Technically, all United States airports have a “K” attached to the front, to distinguish them from other countries’ airports, but it’s almost never used. The one exception being some GPS units which would require you to enter “KLAX”. “KMIA”, “KDTW”, or “KORD” for some of the airports discussed in this thread. Other countries have a different initial character but darned if I could recite them off the top of my head, since all my flying has been in the US
Airports can, very rarely, get a new identification code. Oslo used to have two airports, the late and curiously lamented Fornebu (FBU) (okay, it was crappy and obsolescent, but you couldn’t beat the commute time from downtown!) and the smaller Gardermoen (GEN). FBU has been closed, the bastards are building a suburb over it and soon you won’t be able to tell there ever was an airport there. GEN has been expanded, updated, and basically changed beyond all recognition. At the same time as the airport formally moved from FBU to GEN (between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. one October night in '98), the codes became obsolete. Gardermoen was rechristened Oslo Airport Gardermoen, code OSL.
It’s probably relevant to note that OSL had been in use previously, sort of. It stood for “Oslo - All Airports”. Since Oslo now only has one airport, you could say the abbreviation was just transferred, not changed - but GEN is gone.
John F. Kennedy International Airport has the unsurprising airport code of JFK.
I know JFK oringially opened in 1948 as Idlewild (IDL) cite. It obviously did not change to JFK until the mid-1960’s, and the airport designator changed as well as the name.
Were the airport designators more susceptable to change at that time, or was the name change to JFK an exception?
As to the ORL/MCO thing: The airline Reservations system can bend things a little around the FAA system – if all commercial airlines into Orlando fly to the former McCoy AFB, a reservations system can “read” a request for ORLando as a redirect to MCO. Some reservations systems allow you to punch in “NYC” and then the screen comes up with flights going to any of LGA , JFK, or EWR.
As to codes around where I live, the main San Juan/Luis Muñoz Marín International is reasonably SJU, and the old SJ waterfront airport is SIG (for San Juan at Isla Grande). However Ponce, for some dyslexic reason, is PSE; Aguadilla is BQN, for Point Borinquen Field, the original name of the former Ramey AFB (and now again the name of the USCG station there).
Culebra Island, though, is CPX, apparently having run out of callsigns with the appropriate phonetics.
Orlando International Airport - southeast of Orlando, just off Rte 528/Beeline and Rte 417/Greeneway – the big one, multi-terminals, and adding on another terminal within the next few years (although I think this is on hold for awhile, til the local economy picks back up). Large passenger and cargo jets, domestic and international flights
Orlando Executive Airport, just east of downtown on Rte. 50/Colonial Drive (within a major mall and strip mall area). Primarily private and charter jets (lots of puddle jumpers).
Sanford-Orlando International Airport - about 45 minutes north of Orlando and a goodly ways from any of the tourist attractions. An attempt by the town of Sanford to wrest international flights from OIA (#1 above). Lost a court case when they tried to call themselves Orlando-Sanford Airport (even through there are 6 towns between them and Orlando, got into MAJOR trouble with environmental groups and the federal government when they cut down an active (productive) Bald Eagle’s nest that was “in the path of a proposed runway” that was to be built in several years (IIRC, it ended up getting nixed since it was too short and over the path of several houses). Serious fines, restitutions and quite a few heads rolled on that one. Serves primarily charter flights from the UK.
Either #2 (for size) or #3 (for location) could be considered the “half”.
And it’s nice to know that you can scribble PZH on a baggage tag and have it go to Zhob, Pakistan…