#IATA CITY CODES FULL#
#IATA CITY CODES CODE#

ICAO stands for International Civil Aviation Organization. But to explain why four-letter codes exist, we have to go back and talk about ICAO.

#IATA CITY CODES CODE#

What About The Four-Letter Codes?Īs if it’s not confusing enough that your ticket says YYZ when you’re flying to Toronto, there’s also an additional four-letter code that usually makes even less sense. Then came the IATA standardization with unique codes for every single airport, ICAO codes for official purposes, and even FAA codes for those tiny airports that don’t have an IATA or an ICAO code. But as the industry expanded and airports were built in places without weather stations, this became unmanageable.

#IATA CITY CODES FULL#

It was much easier for pilots to refer to an airport by a two-letter code than the full name, and for a while, the system worked well.

The necessity for codes arose from convenience way back in the 30s, even before the IATA standardization. IATA codes, unlike ICAO and FAA codes, are used only for commercial purposes. They are assigned to tickets, they show up in the flight itinerary, and they’re on your baggage tag so handlers know which plane they need to shove your bag into. IATA location codes are mostly used for commercial purposes – in other words, for purposes relating to passengers. What’s The Purpose Of IATA Location codes? Most airports are also assigned ICAO codes, but more on that later. Keep in mind that I’m only referring to the IATA codes here. Especially since IATA codes are usually assigned just to public airports. Considering that there are 17,576 possible three-letter combinations, we still have a long way to go before this coding system has to be changed at all.

There’s 9130 airport location codes total, and you can look them all up on IATA’s official website. It can be any letters that are meaningful to the area in a way, as long as that three-letter combination is not in use by any other entity in the world. The code will usually include initials from the airport name or the city it’s in. And the main requirement is still that the code is unique so that there’s no confusion. It wasn’t until 1960 that IATA stepped in as the main body that would regulate airport codes and ensure that every airport is assigned a unique code.īut that was the case almost a century earlier – today, IATA assigns location codes to all the new airports. Some airports instead changed their name and opted to use an entirely different three-letter code. That’s why we have LAX for the Los Angeles airport and PDX for the Portland airport today. Many airports just added the suffix -X to their existing two-letter code to avoid any confusion. Why? Because there are only 325 different two-letter combinations, but more than 17,500 three-letter combinations are possible. When IATA wanted to standardize the codes for all airports, they decided to use three-letter instead of two-letter codes. How Are Airport Codes Assigned?īack in the day when there were no standardized location codes for airports, pilots would refer to them with two-letter codes designated by the National Weather Service.

When you book a flight, your itinerary displays the IATA codes that are assigned to the airports you will be using. IATA is focused mostly on the commercial side of traveling, and so IATA codes are generally used for ticketing passengers and tagging baggage. As the demand for air travel grew, the industry boomed – nowadays, it’s more than 100 times larger than at the time of IATA’s founding. Today’s IATA is vastly different from the original organization because of the unprecedented growth of the industry. Today, over 290 airlines from 120 different countries are members of IATA. At the very beginning, IATA consisted of only 57 airlines from 31 countries. But even that IATA was a successor to the International Air Traffic Association founded in The Hague in 1919.

It was originally founded in Havana in 1945, to promote safe and reliable air travel. That would be IATA – International Air Transport Association. But, who assigns and monitors these codes to ensure that no two airports have the same code? It’s what you’ll see on your ticket, flight itinerary, and baggage tag when you fly to any specific airport. Each airport has a three-letter location code that is unique to that specific airport. List Of Funny Airport Codes What Are Airport Codes?Īirport codes are three-letter codes that are assigned to airports around the world.

Iata city codes