How do airports get their 3 letters?

IATA airport codes are often based on the first three letters of the airport's city. 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.



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Airport coding first began in the 1930s, and airlines typically chose their own two-letter codes. By the late 1940s, there were too many airports, and the system shifted to the three-letter code we know today. Los Angeles International Airport, for instance, was originally just “LA,” but became LAX in 1947.

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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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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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In many cultures, the number 13 is associated with bad luck, which is why many airlines prefer to avoid igniting the superstitions of their customers and have opted to remove the number from there seating plans.

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'London's largest airport, Heathrow, is hemmed in by the suburbs and limited to just two runways,' he explains. 'Because it can't expand, the demand for air travel is met by smaller, single-runway airports around the South-East: Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and Southend.

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the letter ''K'' was simply assigned to the contiguous US by ICAO, in order to have a system with unique identifiers for world-wide use, instead of trying to adapt local system to match. The IATA codes had been in use already and possible duplicates could not be excluded.

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Three letter combinations gives 263=17576 possible codes. Some airports have multiple codes (ARN = STO, for example). I'm just going to guess that there are more than 17576 airports in the world.

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SF was given an 'O', however, that worked nicely for the 'o' in Francisco, and thus became SFO. The letters do not actually stand for anything, but early on were given to airports with an attempt to match or approximate them to something recognizable.

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King Fahd International Airport (DMM) — Dammam, Saudi Arabia. At 299.61 square miles (776 square kilometers), King Fahd International Airport is the largest airport in the world by total area.

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Meaning of IAD Dulles originally used airport code DIA, the initials of Dulles International Airport. When handwritten, it was often misread as DCA, the code for Washington National Airport, so in 1968 Dulles's code was changed to IAD.

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YVR is the IATA code for the Vancouver International Airport. The initial Y is a big clue that it's an IATA code for a Canadian airport. Presumably people are abbreviating the city to the code associated with that airport.

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Codes beginning with Y were reserved for Canada and, in the case of Montréal-Trudeau, the remaining two letters – U and L – correspond to the frequency emitted by the radio beacon in Kirkland, near Dorval. Thus, the code indicates that the airport is in Canada, near the Kirkland beacon.

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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. That name was short-lived. In 1949 the airport was renamed for Lt. Cmdr.

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(C) YYZ – Toronto Pearson International Airport As for the 'YZ' part, that dates all the way back to the Morse Code railway stations along the Canadian National Railway, which had two-letter identifiers. The code for the station in Malton, Ontario, was YZ, which is where Pearson sits today—hence YYZ.

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