I think they’re called, airport codes? But, how do airports determine what theirs is? It seems like there isn’t an clear pattern to different airports abbreviations. (EX: Denver’s airport code is DEN, San Francisco’s is SFO, Baltimore’s is BWI)
In: Other
It’s a bit all over the place, there are standards but it varies a lot by country and location.
Ideally each city would use 3 initials that represent them like DEN for Denver, but a lot of cities have multiple airports so you end up with airport codes like LAX (LA with an X) or JFK (The JFK airport)
There’s also overlap, so the largest or first airports with a particular handle win and the new guy gets a weird identifier.
Canada puts Y’s in front of all major airports because they decided to use existing Railway/Weather station 2 digit names and added Y to the front like YED (Edmonton), YWG (Winnipeg), and more esoteric ones like YYZ (Pearson airport Toronto)
Latest Answers