If you're like me, the three letter city codes our industry uses for airports are confusing. I'm in the air flying from RSW , in a few months we'll open IAD, getting from SMF to SDF is difficult. Is Birmingham BHM or BMH? How in the world do you come up with MCI for the airport in Kansas City (better yet, how is Kansas City in Missouri?) Come on, those of us who live by intuition can never get where we're going by ourselves. MAF , MCO, BDL, and SNA ? I think it is all a bunch of CRP if you ask me. Thank goodness it is DAL or I would never get home.
Oh, by the way, Southwest used to have its own two-letter city codes. Think the three letter ones are confusing? I can't remember the codes off the top of my head but I bet there's a few of you out there that do.
(For those of you who have no idea of what Richard is talking about, go here.)
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We only have 17,576 possible airport code combinations with three letters. How soon will it be before we run out of codes?
Interesting calculation Chris. It'll probably be when HEL freezes over. On second thought, since HEL is in Finland it will probably be longer.
What does SMU designate?
Why that would be the Harvard of the South, Southern Methodist University. Oh...you meant aviation wise? That would be Sheep Mountain, Alaska
Brian
Unfortunately smaller general aviation airports are closing at an alarming rate so I don't think running out of codes will be an issue. Don't forget about ICAO standards either with the 4 digit code. (i.e. KMML is in Minnesota while YMML is in Australia).
For real, this is one of the funnier posts. Well done.
Just the other day I quizzed my friend on city codes, see if she could figure out some of our more confusing ones (BDL??)
In her words:
"Who on earth came up with these things???"
Some of the codes actually do make sense if you know the name of the airport:
SDF: Louisville (Standiford Field)
RSW: Fort Meyeres (Southwest Florida International)
BDL: Hartford (Bradley International)
MCO: Orlando (Use to be called McCoy Air Force Base (or Field, I forget which))
SNA: Orange County (Santa Ana)
LAX: Los Angeles (they just added the "X" to the old two letter code. (in the 1930's and earlier, the codes were only 2 letters))
Not all airports have 3 letter codes. Many of the general aviation airports have 3 or 4 character codes such as 3A1 or 41TX.
For a list of all airport codes, see the FAA's publication "Location Identifiers" available at http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/
Richard, you left out one of my favorites - MSY. It actually makes sense. It stands for Moisant Stock Yards http://flymsy.com/faq.htm. Its cool MSY publishes that trivia tidbit on their website.
Jeremiah, as far as I know, BDL is just Bradley abbreviated. Is there more to it?
Have a question for you. I love southwest, it is convienent from my home at MacArthur Airport in Islip NY, some of our family moved to West Palm and now will be using you more. The question is are you ever anticipating having flights to Myrtle Beach SC (direct flight) from MacArthur. The only airline that I can find is Spirit out of LaGuardia that has a direct flight, but is extremely expensive it cost us $1500 for 4 people, then 3 days before we left, I went on line to check out ticket prices and found a $78.00 fare each way, when I called spirit , they weren't helpful and said to cancel the flight and rebook it, but no guarantees. Then she said the flight was booked, which in fact, when we were on the plane there were at least 11 seats unoccupied. Besides to park at laguardia for 8 days was $261.00 ouch.
Sheri
Ha, ha! I've been wondering lately how some of these cities get the codes they do-for example, Orlando's being MCO! Now I see. I have quite a few memorized (& I'll keep practicing those, of course), but am working on memorizing the others so I'll be ready! :)
P.S. Richard, the senior minister at my church graduated from SMU, but I know it was before you did!
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