Does every airport have a unique 3-letter code?

For example, ATL is the location identifier for the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and MEX is used for Mexico City. The airport codes can also refer to the city's initials–HKG for Hong Kong or SLC for Salt Lake City.” So every airport that has adopted this IATA standard has a three-letter code.



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For most readers (who we assume love to fly), it's relatively common knowledge that every airport has unique three and four-letter codes associated with it.

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Codes in the range QAA–QNZ are reserved for aeronautical use; QOA–QQZ for maritime use and QRA–QUZ for all services. Q has no official meaning, but it is sometimes assigned a word with mnemonic value, such as Queen for example in QFE: Queen's field elevation, or Query, Question, reQuest.

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According to Airfarewatchdog, in the 1930s, it was important to know whether or not an airport had a weather/radio station located on its premises, for safety and landing reasons. If it did, the letter Y for yes was added in front of the existing radio call sign.

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The X in LAX
With the rapid growth in the aviation industry, in 1947, the identifiers expanded to three letters and LA received an extra letter to become LAX. The letter X does not otherwise have any specific meaning in this identifier.

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There are two entities responsible for allocating codes to airports. The first one is the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which assigns four-letter codes to public and private airports.

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IATA Members ?From 57 founding members in 1945, IATA now represents some 300 airlines in over 120 countries. Carrying 83% of the world's air traffic, IATA members include the world's leading passenger and cargo airlines.

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As IATA airlines are somewhat stricter in their requirements than the ICAO Technical Instructions, the DGR specifies more precisely how to prepare a shipment.

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Some Canadian airports add letters from the city's name after the Y, such as YOW for Ottawa, YYC for Calgary and YVR for Vancouver (which really stands for Yes Very Rainy, Vancouverite Al Colodey says).

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ORD – Chicago O'Hare “ORD” is a nod to the airfield's history, which started its life as Orchard Field Airport (OrchaRD) in 1945, at the site where Douglas Corporation had a wartime aircraft assembly plant.

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There might be a main international airport and a smaller, domestic/regional-only airport. London is so big that it actually has six official airports. They are located in very different parts of the city, serve different purposes and largely offer flights to differing destinations.

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