OT: Airport Codes

Always assumed the Y was something For Canadian airports -- YYZ for Toronto, YVR for Vancouver, YHZ for Halifax

On my current eastern trip I left from YEG flying to YOW with later legs of the trip taking me to YYZ and YUL, returning to YYC when business is done.

During winter drilling season I spend way too much time at YZF and YFS.

Only really tiny, rarely used airports in Canada have a code beginning with a letter other than 'Y'. I have no clue how this arrangement came to pass.

The only one of those codes that I just noted that makes any sense to me is YFS..........Fort Simpson in the North West Territories.

Drink a couple of farmerarts and you won't give a rats ass what their called! :)

My best guess is that eg is the 2 letter identifier for the non directional beacon(NDB)located at the airport.

First of all, to my knowledge, those three-letters designations are for cities in general, not solely airports, that are used in the travel industry. I only have one example to go by: I like to travel by train a lot. (Not for fear of flying; I just like trains.) At the Los Angeles Union Station, I recall seeing checked baggage with labels, "LAX," just like you would see at the Los Angeles International Airport.

The Canadian cities abbreviations seem to be named differently, than the U.S.

When you see an "X" at the end of a city's name, such as LAX-Los Angeles, PDX--Portland, and JAX--Jacksonville, that indicates that the first two letters are sufficient to identify that city. But, a third letter is necessary to fill out the three-letter code.

I'm surprised no one looked up this website:
world-airport-codes.com

Another handy website I use for ANY acronym or abbreviation I don't know is: acronymfinder.com

However, for TUSCL stuff I first consult:
urbandictionary.com

@Club_Goer: "First of all, to my knowledge, those three-letters designations are for cities in general, not solely airports"

That may be true for some cities, and it may have been true for all cities at one time, but it can't be applied universally now.

Louisville has two airports that I know of. LOU is the one at Bowman Field, and SDF is Louisville International Airport.

Bowman Field (LOU) is a small field near the National Guard facility. It's mostly non-commercial with short runways unsuitable for anything but small aircraft, but may have been here first, if the name is any indication.

SDF (Standiford Field) is what everyone here means when they say "the airport."

@ GMD: Interesting! Like I said, I have just one example to go by. Maybe at one time, the abbreviation system was different and then later it was standardized.

Club_Goer -GMD is correct. There are many cities around with multiple air ports. DFW & DAL, ORD & MDW, JFK & LGA. Also the X is used a lot in place of the word international.

@ Shadow: The use of the "X" could, certainly represent the word, "international," but remember, I saw also it used at a train station (which doesn't have the word, "international," in its name).

Try these on for size, fellas: BAD, FAT, NFL. I don't think any monger will be going to any of these 3 places by choice. The 2nd one (FAT) is Fresno, CA, derived from Fresno Air Terminal. I don't think there's any stripclubs there. If there are, I'm sure they're way down on the bucket list. Choices 1 & 3 are military bases: BAD= Barksdale AFB (LA), NFL= NAS Fallon (NV).

@ minnow: There are two strip clubs in Fresno, CA:

tuscl.net

I knew someone who worked in Fresno for five years and referred to it as, "Fresburgh."

(Of course the fact that that town's state university was a rival to where I went to college, has nothing to do with my opinion of Fresburgh, er, uh, Fresno. There are no strip clubs in the town where I went to college.)

Fun with location identifiers. LOL.
SEE
BIL
EAT
BET
TYS
BIG
FAT
HOT
PUS
AND
FUK

@ Shadow: Add TIT and I'll play the game too.

Club-Goer - No airport but there is a TIT gauge in older air craft. That's turbine inlet temperature in case you were wondering. :)

I read an article not too long about about Sioux City in Iowa. Apparently they did an about face when the authorities refused to change their airport code from SUX and have now embraced the title.

This has got to be one of the stranger threads I've seen in my nearly 14 years on TUSCL. :)

Motor has entirely too much time on his hands! LOL

Word is that RICH STUD rickdugan has his own private airport, airport code: FAG.

What's LOL?

Loma Linda, CA??

Nah...It's probably close to Mars Hill.

The codes are assigned several ways, as others have stated, all Canadian Airports start with Y, and so do a few in the US, Alaska has a few. Since there are only 3 characters and numbers available, that limits you.

Some try to come as close as possible either to the airport name or city, but when they can't then a close sounding name may be used, or just a close random one. You can think of it as a hash table, with a very complex and screwy has function, with a size of 46656 locations and no overflow.

One small detail with the ICAO and IATA codes, as per the linked site the codes usually but not always share the 3-letter "location identifier". Then add to that how the airports also have radio callsigns. It becomes a collaborative effort between the individual country's regulators and the international ones to prevent duplication. So you may have airport codes based on the city, based on the old name of the airfield, Canada has some intuitive ones (YQB, Québec) and some that are not (YYZ, Toronto Pearson International). The USA tries to derive from names, but still get some that have to use bad spelling (PSE for Ponce, apparently every permutation of the real spelling was taken), and in the end some of the smaller airports even get alphanumeric codes.

Then add in the hundreds of VORs like ZCI - Crazy Woman WY.

Representing CAE y'all.