Look at your luggage tag or air waybill and you'll see
airport codes instead of origin and destination city names
spelled out. IATA (International Air Transport Association)
assigns a three-letter identifier code to every commercial
airport in the world. (By the way, pronounce it
"Eye-ah-ta,") It's no mystery how IATA came up with BOS for
Boston or STL for St. Louis. But why the heck did it assign
MCI to Kansas City, IAD to Washington Dulles or EWR to
Newark?
Turns out there was method to the madness. When they
started assigning IATA codes, certain prefixes were set
aside. The Navy grabbed the "N" prefixes. Navy pilots train
at NPA (Navy Pensacola), for instance. Take away the "N"
from Newark and EWR makes sense. Nacogdoches, TX? OCH.
With few exceptions, prefixes beginning with "W" or "K" are
generally not used for USA airports lest they be confused
with radio station call letters. So before Washington
Dulles opened they were leaning toward DIA (Dulles
International Airport) but then realized that it might be
too easily confused with nearby Reagan (DCA—District
of Columbia Airport), especially when harried freight
clerks were scribbling chalk letters on baggage carts.
Stick the D at the end and International Airport Dulles
doesn't seem so crazy.
Long before the Wright Brothers, the National Weather
Service dotted stations around the country with two letter
city codes. Later, IATA adopted some of those by simply
adding an X. That's why we might ship from Portland, OR
(PDX) to Los Angeles (LAX).
JFK Airport is a rarity in that it changed IATA code from
IDL when it changed its name from Idlewild. Usually once a
code is assigned, it stays assigned. So if you hop on board
a flight to Indianola, MS and have a really old pilot, you
might want to make sure he doesn't head for New York seeing
how Indianola took over Idlewild's discarded IDL.
An IATA code that starts with Y probably means your freight
is probably headed for Canada. Literally hundreds of
Canadian airport codes begin with Y.
Who wants to be FAT? Fresno Air Terminal doesn't mind. How
do they get CMH out of Columbus? From Columbus Municipal
Hangar. Puzzled on CVG being Cincinnati? Cincinnati's
airport actually sits across the Ohio River in Covington,
KY.
File MCI for Kansas City under "too late now." Because of
the initial letter K restrictions, the original Kansas City
airport was MKC (Missouri Kansas City). When they started
planning a big new airport someone decided that
Mid-Continent International sounded pretty darned fancy and
got the MCI designation. Before the airport opened, local
politicians decided to change the name to Kansas City
International so that travelers would recognize their fair
city. Meantime, it was too late to change the MCI code.
Okay, I've kept you in suspense long enough. You're
wondering about ORD for Chicago O'Hare, aren't you? Midway
(MDW), its cross town rival, was bursting at the seams as
the world's busiest airport in the early days of commercial
jets. Officials decided to build a huge new airport
northwest of town where a tiny airstrip that had been
renamed for heroic Navy pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Butch O'Hare. As
MCI will vouch, once you get an IATA code it's almost
impossible to change it.
What was the name of the little strip before they changed
it to O'Hare? Orchard Field—ORD.
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http://Howtoshipanything.com is and online resource
dedicated to help you ship both domestically and
internationally. W.E. Reinka, an international shipping
consultant, may be reached at
http://www.howtoshipanything.com/w-e-reinka/
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