Why do all Canada airports start with Y?

As air travel became common, Canadian airports began to use 3 and now 4-letter codes, typically begin with the letter “C”. It is also thought that the reason the letter Y is used for all (or most) Canadian airports, is that the letter “Y” indicated there was a weather reporting station at the airport or close by.



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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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If the airport had a weather station, authorities added a Y to the front of the code, meaning Yes to indicate it had a weather station or some other letter to indicate it did not.

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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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  • Yakutia Airlines ?(R3)
  • Yamal Airlines ?(YC)
  • Yan Air ?(YE)
  • Yangon Airways ?(YH)
  • Yemenia - Yemen Airways ?(IY)
  • Yeti Airlines ?(YT)
  • Yunnan Hong Tu Airlines ?(A6)


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When Canada started assigning three letter codes to airports, very few foreign airports began with “Y”, so Canada put a “Y” in front of each nearby train station code to create the airport code and to differentiate it from U.S. airports.

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