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