What are the acronyms for airports?

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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The International Air Transport Association's (IATA) Location Identifier is a unique 3-letter code (also commonly known as IATA code) used in aviation and also in logistics to identify an airport.

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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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For SFO, the most apparent fix was to add on an 'O. ' Hill resolved the mystery in his statement to Bay Curious: “So with SF, they simply took an 'O,' which we can assume was convenient to the fact that San Francisco has an 'O' at the end of it.”

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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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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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Every airport has its code and EWR is the code of Newark Liberty International Airport. Three-letter codes are assigned by the International Airport Association as each airport's ID. In this case, EWR comprises the three letters from Newark since all codes that start with N are used by the Navy.

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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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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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Many airlines and airports insist that the lack of row 13s or gate 13s isn't the result of superstitions. Rather, they often skip numbers so that gates and rows can be rearranged without having to renumber every gate or row, and to provide uniform seat numbers across different types of airplanes.

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Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) is one of the world's largest airports, ranking second globally in passenger numbers and third in aircraft movements. DFW was built between 1967 and 1973 and became operational on January 13, 1974, with American Airlines' first commercial flight.

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Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport remains the busiest airport in the world with 5.2 million seats in September 2023. The composition of the Global Top 10 Busiest Airports is also the same as last month but there are a few changes to the rankings.

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