An IATA airport code, also known as an IATA location identifier, IATA station code, or simply a location identifier, is a unique three-letter geocode designating many airports, cities (with one or more airports) and metropolitan areas (cities with more than one airport) around the world, defined by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The characters prominently displayed on baggage tags attached at airport check-in desks are an example of a way these codes are used. The assignment of these codes is governed by IATA Resolution 763, and it is administered by the IATA's headquarters in Montreal, Canada. The codes are published semi-annually in the IATA Airline Coding Directory. Alphabetical lists of airports sorted by IATA code are available. IATA also provides codes for airport handling entities and for certain railway stations, bus stations and ferry ports. A list of railway station codes, shared in agreements between airlines and rail lines such as Amtrak, SNCF, and Deutsche Bahn, is available. However, many railway administrations have their own list of codes for their stations, such as Amtrak station codes.
History Airport codes arose out of the convenience that the practice brought pilots for location identification in the 1930s. Initially, pilots in the United States used the two-letter code from the National Weather Service (NWS) for identifying cities. This system became unmanageable for cities and towns without an NWS identifier, and the use of two letters allowed only a few hundred combinations; a three-letter system of airport codes was implemented. This system allowed for 17,576 permutations, assuming all letters can be used in conjunction with each other. In the early days of aviation, airport codes frequently adopted (or were required to comply with) the naming conventions previously established by weather stations, railway stations, and other commercial or governmental outposts that communicated by radio or telegraph. The code names for those stations, which usually predated the use of two-way radio and even radiotelephony itself, reflected the need for terse, standardized signalling patterns that could be easily transmitted and correctly received via radiotelegraphy and Morse code.
Naming conventions
National policies
Canada Canada's unusual codes, which bear little to no similarity with any conventional abbreviation to the city's name (such as YUL in Montréal and YYZ in Toronto), originated from the two-letter codes used to identify weather reporting stations in the 1930s. The letters preceding the two-letter code follow the following format:
Y – for "Yes", this letter was used when the station shared its location with an airport. W – for "Without", when the weather-reporting station did not share its location with an airport. U – used when the station was located together with a non-directional beacon (NDB). X – suggesting that the last two letters of a code were already in use by a Canadian airport. Z – indicated that an airport code had been used for the identification of an airport in the U.S. 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). Many Canadian airports have a code that starts with W, X or Z, but none of these are major airports. When the Canadian transcontinental railways were built, each station was assigned its own two-letter Morse code:
VR for Vancouver TZ for Toronto QB for Quebec City WG for Winnipeg SJ for Saint John YC for Calgary OW for Ottawa EG for Edmonton When the Canadian government established airports, it used the existing railway codes for them as well. 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. When international codes were created in cooperation with the United States, because "Y" was seldom used in the United States, Canada simply used the weather station codes for its airports, changing the "Y" to a "Z" if it conflicted with an airport code already in use. The result is that most major Canadian airport codes start with "Y" followed by two letters in the city's name, based on the transcontiential railroad two-letter Morse code, as mentioned above (for example, YOW for Ottawa, YWG for Winnipeg, YYC for Calgary, or YVR for Vancouver), whereas other Canadian airports append the two-letter code of the radio beacons that were the closest to the actual airport, such as YQX in Gander or YXS in Prince George. Four of the ten provincial capital airports in Canada have ended up with codes beginning with YY, including:
YYZ for Toronto, Ontario YYJ for Victoria, British Columbia YYT for St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador YYG for Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island Canada's largest airport is YYZ for Toronto Pearson (as YTZ was already allocated to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, the airport was given the station code of Malton, Mississauga, where it is located). YUL is used for Montréal–Trudeau (UL was the ID code for the beacon in the city of Kirkland. While these codes make it difficult for the public to associate them with a particular Canadian city, some codes have become popular in usage despite their cryptic nature, particularly at the largest airports. Toronto's code has entered pop culture in the form of "YYZ", a song by the rock band Rush, which utilizes the Morse code signal as a musical motif. Some airports have started using their IATA codes as brand names, such as Calgary International Airport (YYC) and Vancouver International Airport (YVR).
New Zealand Several New Zealand airports use codes that contain the letter Z, to distinguish them from similar airport names in other countries. Some examples are HLZ for Hamilton, ZQN for Queenstown, and WSZ for Westport.
United States Since the United States Navy reserved "N" codes, and to prevent confusion with Federal Communications Commission broadcast call signs, which begin with "W" or "K", the airports of certain U.S. cities whose name begins with one of these letters had to adopt "irregular" airport codes:
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