Airport ABCs: An Explanation of Airport Identifier Codes (1994) | Hacker News Reader

Airport ABCs: An Explanation of Airport Identifier Codes (1994)

skygod.com

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ICAO airport codes in Switzerland:

L = Southern Europe

S = Switzerland

Z = Flight Information Region (FIR) Zürich with telex (back then) G = Flight Information Region (FIR) Geneva with telex (back then) P = Flight Information Region (FIR) Zürich without telex (back then) T = Flight Information Region (FIR) Geneva without telex (back then) M = Military X = Heliport

Some examples:

LSZH = Zürich International Airport LSZX = Schänis Private Airfield (but with telex back then!)

LSGG = Geneva International Airport LSGK = Saanen Private Airport

LSME = Emmen Military Airfield LSMM = Meiringen Military Airfield

LSPV = Wangen-Lachen Private Airfield LSPN = Triengen Private Airfield

LSTR = Montricher Private Airfield

LSXS = Schindellegi Private Heliport

An interesting case is Bâle-Mulhouse, a binational French-Swiss airport located in France:

It's primary ICAO code is LFSB (F = France), however, for AFTN, there's also LSZM.

AFTN = Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network.

> airports around the world are universally known by a unique three-letter code

The 'universality' of the IATA codes seems to be a common misunderstanding as most passengers only fly to airports with scheduled services, therefore they assume all air facilities have such codes.

Only 30% or so of airports and airfields have three -letter IATA codes; all flight planning and ATC is conducted using the four-letter ICAO codes which are almost universal, though ZZZZ is eserved for exceptional cases.

Outside North America the ICAO scheme has some interesting local patterns which permit a reasonable guess to be made as to the location and category of airfield, something the IATA scheme cannot offer; it relies on rote memorisation.

e.g. ICAO code EGAA. E is Western Europe, G is UK, A is the westernmost region of the UK and A is the primary airport in thst region. Belfast International / Aldergrove.

It's fairly understandable given that those 30% of airports probably carry more than 90% of general commercial passenger traffic.

Certainly enough to build travel booking engines on, as many have proven - but it'd be interesting as a niche project to provide a tool for arranging/searching for more regional airport transport options. Flight-sharing via local airports, for example :)

yes, general aviation tools have to account for ICAO, IATA and abbreviation lookups. (many times the 'K' prefix from the ICAO gets dropped in communications)

FMI see:

http://skyvector.com/ (see text box, upper left)

http://charternation.com/airports/

http://www.airnav.com/airports/

Did you not make it through the article? The author described exactly that almost the exact same way.

IATA codes are also often used by ISPs in the domain names of some routers (as can be seen in routers).

I found it actually quite surprising that this is common practice, yet I couldn't find this documented anywhere.

The Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) used to give advice on naming conventions, and server host names incorporating location information was one of their examples. The pattern was LOC-OR-FUNC-##, or at least that's what we ended up implementing. (I'm unable to find this in current versions of the MOF documentation.) At the time I used IATA codes because I didn't want to come up with my own comprehensive location encoding standard---and because I was operating data centers in cities with international airports. Nowadays we operate data centers or branch offices in some pretty remote spots, so we've had to come up with our own three-letter codes anyway. I hate the arbitrariness of it. Recently, I came across http://www.mnxsolutions.com/devops/a-proper-server-naming-sc..., which suggests using the United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations (UN/LOCODE, http://www.unece.org/cefact/locode/service/location.html). It still isn't comprehensive enough for our purposes (we operate in some _really_ remote spots), but I like it a lot better than the IATA codes.

EDIT: I meant "as can be seen in traceroute"

See also ICAO prefix map via wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Civil_Aviation_Or...

Canadian codes, after the universal Y, are an interesting mess with a lot of non-intuitive codes. Here's a selection:

* YUL is Montreal airport in Dorval, with a mystery U. The somewhat more sensible YMX went to the flop Mirabel airport development

* YYZ is Toronto airport in Downsview. The city airport is YTZ. YTO is the metro code.

* YYG is Charlottetown

* YYJ is Victoria airport at the other end of the country

* YXE is Saskatoon

* YQR is Regina, it would be neat if the Q was for "Queen"

* YZF is Yellowknife

* YXY is Whitehorse

I do prefer the ICAO scheme.

Yeah I've always been curious if there is a scheme to the Canadian codes, or if they're just random - anyone know?

YYZ is Toronto Pearson in Mississauga

YZD is Downsview

Oops, yeah, I think I was thinking "Malton" when I wrote Downsview there. My bad.

YEG - Edmonton

YMM - Fort Mac

YYC - Calgary

Just seems random naming to me.

Well one of the characters matching (E, M, C), arguably two for Fort McMurray, is still better than YYZ matching none of the characters in any of the names (Toronto, Lester B Pearson, Malton, Mississauga) of the country's largest airport!

The YYZ/YTZ distinction shouldn't be allowed, I've been fooled by too small a font size before so I didn't notice one of a list of segments was "Toronto YTZ" rather than "Toronto YYZ"

> Most of the "hard to decipher" identifiers become obvious if one knows the name of the airport rather than the city served...Grand Rapids, Michigan, has the Gerald R. Ford airport (GRR).

I would have just assumed it was Grand Rapids.

I'm quite confused on the accuracy of this article because of GRR. The article was written in 1994, but according to the GRR history page (http://www.grr.org/History.php#5), the airport did not change its name until 1999. I believe the GRR is for GRand Rapids, and question if this was actually written as is in 1994.

Edit: I see that the article is updated online. Still think that GRR is for Grand Rapids though.

Edit2: Source Found! A NTSB report froma crash in December of 1998 cites a weather reading from " Kent County International Airport (GRR)" (Source: http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20001211...). I move that this shows that the airport code was GRR prior to being re-named Gerald R. Ford, and that GRR stands for Grand Rapids.

Edit3: Further a US DoT doc from April 1998, lists Kent County International as GRR in Appendix D: http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/sr/sr255/apndx.pdf

What fun! Any traveler will enjoy this.

A few of them are mentioned in passing without explanation, like one of our local airports:

> FAT is Fresno, California.

For anyone who is wondering, FAT stands for Fresno Air Terminal.

Is the article from 1994? It contains the line "In 2007 the airport made the best of their sucky cipher and started promoting the airport with the slogan "FLY SUX.""

Good eye. I suppose it's been updated.

I think a more successful campaign would have been FLY GAY (GAY was one of the options they could have taken), but I suppose the code might outlast the novelty of the marketing campaign.

From the very first paragraph:

> This article was published in the journal of the Air Line Pilots Association, Air Line Pilot, in December of 1994. [...] I do keep this online version updated.

The airport codes are now second level domains under ".aero". Most of them are redirects set up by the .aero promoters, though.

Maybe just in the States. E.g. pdx.aero => portofportland.com while yyz.aero => Blank page with "under construction" in the title.

It's always amused me that San Carlos airport (which is very, very close to Oracle's HQ) has the FAA airport code SQL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Carlos_Airport_(California)

Another "need to know the name" one is Knoxville, Tennessee. The airport code is TYS. Which is a head-scratcher unless you know the airport's name is McGhee Tyson Airport.

Nashville is another one. BNA. The original name of the airport was Berry field. Berry Nashville Airport.

I love the hidden substructure of trivia like this.

Then you will also enjoy the naming scheme for runways, e.g. 22L means 220-229 degrees magnetic heading, Left (runways with no parallel will have no trailing letter).

Note that runway 22L is the same as 4R, just with the opposite approach (from the other end, thus 180 degrees around). The 2 names appear at the corresponding ends of the runway.

In airport LFPG, runways 27R and 26R are strictly parallel.

You'll often get consecutively numbered runways that are parallel if there's already a C/L/R on that heading.

For example, DFW has 17L, 17C, 17R, 18L and 18R all with the same magnetic heading (176/356). Everything really is bigger in Texas. :)

And because the magnetic pole moves around over time, that means runways designations aren't constant. A few years ago, the runway at the airport where I fly had to change from 09/27 to 10/28 because of this.

The article missed a really juicy one.

"The Federal Communications Committee set aside the 'W' and 'K' codes for radio stations east and west of the Mississippi respectively. 'Q' was designated for international telecommunications. 'Z' was reserved for special uses"

Okay, but why K and W for United States civilian radio stations?

The answer lies in Morse Code:

    A = . -  ->  W = . - -
    N = - .  ->  K = - . -

The US originally requested "A" for "Army" and "N" for "Navy" when applying to the International Telegraph Union (ITU) in 1912.

The civilian stations came out of adding a dash to the end of both of those letters. N became K, A became W.

Curious to know how Dubai international airport got the code DXB. It doesn't seem to make sense.

DUB is Dublin. I guess they could have used DBI....

Is it me or is this page really scrambled on Chrome 38/Mac OS X Yosemite? It loads fine, but as soon as I scroll down, the background is black and the letters get scrambled in blue

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