Airport Identifier Codes

September 19, 2004 5:37 AM

From LGW to ORD Where do three letter airport codes come from? This guy knows. And: origins of British subscriber trunk dialling codes.
posted by carter (16 comments total)

YHZ will always have a place in my heart.
posted by jon_kill at 6:05 AM on September 19, 2004

The morse code for Toronto Pearson International Airport was used as the basis for Rush's song "YYZ". Little known facts you learn when flying Air Canada.
posted by Eekacat at 6:16 AM on September 19, 2004

Interesting stuff--our airports are easy if you know the people (JFK, LGA --EWR less so tho), and NYC is great for all the flights leaving from anywhere here when searching (LON too). The Canadian thing is weird tho--why not TOR (or PEA), MON, VAN, CAL, etc? It makes it harder, since there's not a person like in CDG or JFK to remember, and there's no connection to the city or airport name at all.
posted by amberglow at 6:23 AM on September 19, 2004

More on airport codes (EEK!) here.
posted by languagehat at 7:04 AM on September 19, 2004

thanks languagehat, i knew that i'd seen the skygod site from somewhere on mefi and i couldn't locate exactly where!
posted by triv at 7:26 AM on September 19, 2004

My favorite is ACK.
posted by found missing at 7:47 AM on September 19, 2004

Oops ... well I must have bookmarked it from *somewhere* ;)
posted by carter at 8:06 AM on September 19, 2004

The morse code for Toronto Pearson International Airport was used as the basis for Rush's song "YYZ". Little known facts you learn when flying Air Canada.

That's a cool factoid, and I just asked a Canadian where the YYZ airport code came from the other day. I guess at least one initial is still a mystery, though. One 'Y' is for York, one is filler, and maybe the 'Z' was just an arbitrary whim?
posted by Shane at 9:30 AM on September 19, 2004

The new geek pilgrimage, fly to SYN, go from SYN to ACK, and just take a plane home from ACK.
posted by tetsuo at 10:10 AM on September 19, 2004

The morse code for Toronto Pearson International Airport was used as the basis for Rush's song "YYZ". Little known facts you learn when flying Air Canada.

I always thought "maybe Rush mis-typed 'XYZ'" - So, thanks!
posted by ed\26h at 10:21 AM on September 19, 2004

I still wonder how Canada got the Y's. No other country got pigeonholed into a single letter.
posted by smackfu at 3:55 PM on September 19, 2004

I always liked the fact that when I was flying to Singapore I was heading into SIN.
posted by TungstenChef at 6:37 PM on September 19, 2004

All of canadas codes start out with Y's and the other two letters in most cases make no sense. there are the exceptions, like YVR for vancouve regional, but most of canada seems to be stuck with odd ones. The y thing is handy for wokring at the airport though. You know which bags coming into the airport are domestic easily.

My favorite thing is when a bag showed up with an uncommon tag like IND or FRA, and I would ask co-workers where it was headed and I would get answers like India and France respectivly.
posted by Iax at 8:33 PM on September 19, 2004

It could be worse than heading into SIN, you could be travelling from HVN to HEL.
posted by jontyjago at 2:14 AM on September 20, 2004

We probably ended by with Y because the US started the three letter code thing and we were the second adopter. To make it easier they gave us all the codes starting with one letter. The only letter that wasn't used for a first character was Y.

Interesting how local experience tints your world view. I'd thought all major countries were assigned a single letter or intial letters pair.
posted by Mitheral at 9:00 AM on September 20, 2004

I just came back from Aeropuerto de Málaga, Andalucía, España. Its code is AGP.

If anyone could explain this it would help me sleep at night.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 3:55 PM on September 21, 2004