Why do airports start with Y?

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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When IATA formed and began requiring airports worldwide to extend their codes to three-letters (as two-letter codes were becoming scarce) during the 1940s, most of Canada's airports had already adopted the Y for “yes” prefix due to their weather reporting and radio stations located on site.

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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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An IATA airport code, also known as an IATA location identifier, IATA station code, or simply a location identifier, is a three-letter geocode designating many airports and metropolitan areas around the world, defined by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

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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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Most large airports in Canada have codes that begin with the letter Y, although not all Y codes are Canadian (for example, YUM for Yuma, Arizona, and YNT for Yantai, China), and not all Canadian airports start with the letter Y (for example ZBF for Bathurst, New Brunswick).

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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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Velana International Airport The Velana International Airport is located just 3 km away from the capital city of Maldives, Male. It is also known as the Male International Airport or Ibrahim Nasir International Airport.

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In 1949, the City renamed the facility O'Hare Airport to honor Edward Butch O'Hare, the U.S. Navy's first flying ace and Medal of Honor recipient in World War II.

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