The code will usually include initials from the airport name or the city it’s in. And the main requirement is still that the code is unique so that there’s no confusion. It wasn’t until 1960 that IATA stepped in as the main body that would regulate airport codes and ensure that every airport is assigned a unique code.īut that was the case almost a century earlier – today, IATA assigns location codes to all the new airports. Some airports instead changed their name and opted to use an entirely different three-letter code. That’s why we have LAX for the Los Angeles airport and PDX for the Portland airport today. Many airports just added the suffix -X to their existing two-letter code to avoid any confusion. Why? Because there are only 325 different two-letter combinations, but more than 17,500 three-letter combinations are possible. When IATA wanted to standardize the codes for all airports, they decided to use three-letter instead of two-letter codes. How Are Airport Codes Assigned?īack in the day when there were no standardized location codes for airports, pilots would refer to them with two-letter codes designated by the National Weather Service. When you book a flight, your itinerary displays the IATA codes that are assigned to the airports you will be using. IATA is focused mostly on the commercial side of traveling, and so IATA codes are generally used for ticketing passengers and tagging baggage. As the demand for air travel grew, the industry boomed – nowadays, it’s more than 100 times larger than at the time of IATA’s founding. Today’s IATA is vastly different from the original organization because of the unprecedented growth of the industry. Today, over 290 airlines from 120 different countries are members of IATA. At the very beginning, IATA consisted of only 57 airlines from 31 countries. But even that IATA was a successor to the International Air Traffic Association founded in The Hague in 1919. It was originally founded in Havana in 1945, to promote safe and reliable air travel. That would be IATA – International Air Transport Association. But, who assigns and monitors these codes to ensure that no two airports have the same code?
It’s what you’ll see on your ticket, flight itinerary, and baggage tag when you fly to any specific airport.
Each airport has a three-letter location code that is unique to that specific airport. List Of Funny Airport Codes What Are Airport Codes?Īirport codes are three-letter codes that are assigned to airports around the world.
0 kommentar(er)
