Which airports do we commonly call by their IATA codes?

July 3, 2023 6:56 AM

The recent post about Party in the USA got me thinking: we generally refer to Los Angeles International Airport as LAX when talking about it; similarly, PDX for Portland International. But we don't usually say "LGA" or "ORD," for example, preferring their names instead. Are there other airports that we do usually call by their IATA codes in the vernacular?
posted by uncleozzy to Writing & Language (63 answers total)

JFK
posted by Sassyfras at 7:02 AM on July 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

Best answer: SFO.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 7:03 AM on July 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

SFO
posted by automatronic at 7:03 AM on July 3, 2023

Best answer: I don't know if this is universal, but folks in DC refer to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport as DCA (or "National").

Raleigh-Durham International is mostly but not exclusively referred to as RDU.
posted by alligatorpear at 7:04 AM on July 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Oh, and BWI.
posted by alligatorpear at 7:04 AM on July 3, 2023 [14 favorites]

Best answer: The two I fly into the most, ABQ and HNL
posted by olopua at 7:05 AM on July 3, 2023

ATL is much less of a mouthful than Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
posted by General Malaise at 7:05 AM on July 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

CLT
posted by atomicstone at 7:06 AM on July 3, 2023

Best answer: DFW
posted by staggernation at 7:07 AM on July 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I’m guessing the airports who have a name with 3 syllables or more usually get called by abbreviations while those with fewer syllables get called by their names (Newark, Hobby, Midway, etc)

Likely also a point of clarification when flying into a city with two airports “I’m flying to DC!” “DCA or Reagan?” Just saying you’re flying into DC leaves it fairly open ended.
posted by raccoon409 at 7:13 AM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I wonder if it matters if you're in an area with multiple airports (among comments above: New York, Washington, the Bay Area, Dallas, Chicago). I live in Atlanta and maybe ATL is one of these airports called by an abbreviation but honestly I just call it "the airport".
posted by madcaptenor at 7:13 AM on July 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

BTV has become a shorthand for the entire city of Burlington, Vermont.

They just renamed it after former senator Pat Leahy, though, so we'll have to see if "Leahy" catches on.
posted by papayaninja at 7:20 AM on July 3, 2023

Best answer: Toronto has two commercial airports: it is not uncommon for the larger to be called YYZ. Oddly, the smaller of the two I have never heard called YTZ, despite is actual name being substantially similar to YOS, which is under 200 km away (both named for WWI pilot Billy Bishop).
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:22 AM on July 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

honestly I just call it "the airport".

Same for mine, in San Diego. The abbreviation is SAN, which is pretty ambiguous as far as narrowing down what city you're talking about (San Jose? San Antonio?); the official name is San Diego International Airport but it used to be Lindbergh Field, and nobody really called it either of those except weather reporters.

MSP might be one of those where the airport and the urbanization both go by the same abbreviation.

I'm not sure how common referring to Detroit's airport as DTW is, but I know it's out there.
posted by LionIndex at 7:35 AM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'd say that one would write MSP but not say MSP - you'd say "the airport", it's not like there's two.

Around here, we don't generally write "MSP" for Minneapolis-St Paul - it's MPLS for Minneapolis, then maybe "the metro" or "Twin Cities" depending on what you're referring to exactly.
posted by Frowner at 7:40 AM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

DFW for both the metro and the airport (Dallas-Fort Worth).
posted by fiercekitten at 7:42 AM on July 3, 2023

I think there's a big written vs. spoken difference. STL is used (or was in my day) for both the airport and the city; the STL on the Cards' uniforms definitely helped. CLE similarly -- nobody says "clee" verbally for Cleveland, but in writing people use CLE for both.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 7:47 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Kansas City is quite commonly known as KCI, despite that being the IATA code for Kon (West Java, Indonesia). They're stuck with being "MCI" (Mid-Continent International), and don't like it.

Seconding YYZ, and not just amongst Rush fans. I've heard YOW being used ironically for Ottawa, because almost no-one has ever said that about the Canadian National Capital Region.
posted by scruss at 7:55 AM on July 3, 2023

Best answer: The Washington DC area airports are DCA (National, aka Reagan Washington National), IAD (Dulles), BWI (Baltimore Thurgood Marshall).

BWI has always been called BWI in my memory.

Dulles has always been called Dulles by most people. (Although these days some transit nerds will call it IAD, or people who are deliberately contrasting it with DCA, see below)

National is more complicated. Official name Washington National but it used to be just called National by everyone local. But in 1998 they changed the name to include Reagan at the beginning. Ugh. Locals did not approve. My experience is longtime locals and Democratic-leaning people still call it National, but more recent newcomers and Republican leaning people call it Reagan.... sometimes it is deliberately signaling something, sometimes not. Publications often call it Reagan National as an effort to serve both sides... I think this split has led to more people and publications calling it DCA as a short-but-not-taking-sides approach. The wikipedia article on National Airport has a little bit on the name change and present-day usage. (Funny recent example - there's a current controversy over a Republican effort to change the flight schedules there. Dueling op-eds have been published in the Washington Post newspaper - the one from local Democratic elected officials uses the name "National" for the airport, which I think has got to be against the WaPo style guide which probably calls for Reagan National, and to me feels like a pointed we-are-the-real-locals signal.)

(I also think that, in general across the country, there's more of a trend these days to use the airport code as a cool regional identifier than there was, say, 30 years ago.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:56 AM on July 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

(CDP Grey’s video on airport code origins is a mine of entertainment). - Gibraltar is GIB we learn, for example. It is sometimes called that.
posted by rongorongo at 7:56 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

…I say LGA all the time, I think most New Yorkers at least use LGA and LaGuardia interchangeably
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:02 AM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think people call Seattle (Tacoma) Airport SEA-TAC, which is neither it's name nor its IATA code (SEA), but sort of a mix?
posted by The Bellman at 8:03 AM on July 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

DIA (for Denver)

Scruss' comment led me to check my decades-long inaccurate memory of DIA's code being DIA -- it's actually DEN! Sorry for being so wrong

It is DEN, but for anyone not familiar, no one (at least locally) refers to it as DEN, but people do refer to it as DIA (for Denver international airport)
posted by sillysally at 8:08 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I think there's a big written vs. spoken difference

Yeah -- to be clear, I'm asking mostly about spoken language, where someone might say they're flying into XXX instead of the airport name (or some other metonym for it). This has been educational!

(And although I do believe you, showbiz_liz, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say ell-gee-ay out loud, somehow, and it's a place I use pretty regularly, which is why I used it as an example.)
posted by uncleozzy at 8:09 AM on July 3, 2023

I sometimes call the Ottawa airport YOW.

I don't know if anyone else does (now that I think about it, I think most people just call it the airport).
posted by philfromhavelock at 8:11 AM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think people call Seattle (Tacoma) Airport SEA-TAC, which is neither it's name nor its IATA code (SEA), but sort of a mix?

SeaTac is a contraction of the name - SEAttle-TAComa International Airport. No one ever calls it just "SEA" so unfortunately it isn't a qualifier for this question..
posted by Special Agent Dale Cooper at 8:12 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'd say that one would write MSP but not say MSP - you'd say "the airport", it's not like there's two.

For locals, sure. For people living nearby but not in The Cities, where they might have a local regional airport (like I did in Eau Claire) or have a choice of where to layover while flying somewhere else (like if you're in Grand Rapids and can transfer in MSP or DTW or O'Hare depending on your airline), it's pretty common to refer to the airport as MSP. So, there might be some difference in a lot of answers for people who live in the local area and have a hub as their only airport vs people that routinely fly through an airport as a layover.
posted by LionIndex at 8:22 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't think anyone has yet mentioned RSW, which used to be named Regional Southwest (hence the IATA code), but has now been promoted to Southwest Florida International Airport.
posted by DrGail at 8:25 AM on July 3, 2023

@DrGail that’s an interesting one because when chatting with my family we always talk about “are you flying into Fort Myers or Fort Lauderdale?” But we’re not from florida, it was just to go visit family
posted by raccoon409 at 8:45 AM on July 3, 2023

I think locals are more likely to call airports by their given names, and outsiders by their airport code. If you don't know how many airports there are in the region that you are flying into, you could easily fall afoul of similar names - Gotham Regional Airport vs. Gotham International Airport? You can't risk calling it Gotham Airport even if you are assuming there is only one, or you might find yourself with just half an hour to make your connection and two hours of traffic to negotiate between the airports.

Similarly if you can't remember whether James Worthington Gordon Airport or John Arthur Fleck Napier Airport is the international one, it's easier to go by the airport code. As someone not from Gotham City I won't have the faintest idea who John Arthur Fleck Napier is and when suffering badly from jet lag may find myself coming up with some garble that combines the two. James Fleck Worth Airport, maybe? Meanwhile, the locals refer to the first one as Wildcat and the second one as Joker and try as I might I have no way to figure out which fancy formal name goes with the short form.

I know plenty of people who still talk about Dorval Airport in real life, although it is officially called Pierre Elliott Trudeau because it is still in Dorval, and at least once I have encountered someone young and confused who referred to that airport as Justin Trudeau.

This difficulty in figuring out airport names is especially pronounced for someone who knows very little about the entire country they are flying into. Dulles and Dallas? Washington DC vs. Washingon State? Saint John vs. Saint Johns? It's MUCH easier and safer to simply look at the airport codes on your ticket.

"I took a plane to YUL
But gremlins worked a hex.
My luggage went to ORD,
While I to LAX."
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:56 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

CVG.
posted by Rykey at 9:03 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

In Albuquerque, "ABQ" is often written to mean the city. A person would usually say "the airport" or infrequently "the Sunport". The official name of "Albuquerque International Sunport" is only used formally.
posted by NotLost at 9:10 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

The New Orleans airport is pretty much just “the airport” but the code, MSY, is pretty well known despite it not being related to the current name, Louis Armstrong International Airport. I definitely have heard people say MSY out loud, not sure I’ve ever heard anyone say Louis Armstrong, despite the name being changed in 2001.
posted by MadamM at 9:11 AM on July 3, 2023

i think every english speaker i know in japan calls kansai international KIX when the conversation is in english. in japanese it's 関空 (kankuu), which is the abbreviation/nickname for 関西国際空港 (kansai kokusai kuukou)
posted by emmling at 9:14 AM on July 3, 2023

Best answer: I think locals are more likely to call airports by their given names, and outsiders by their airport code.

I think it depends on the airport, thus the question. It's just me, but I'd refer to either of the Chicago airports by name (O'Hare or Midway); Atlanta as "Atlanta", DC area airports as BWI, Dulles or National; Dallas-Fort Worth as DFW; Los Angeles area airports as either LAX or their home city (Long Beach, Ontario); Bay Area as either SFO, "Oakland" or "San Jose".
posted by LionIndex at 9:16 AM on July 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

i think every english speaker i know in japan calls kansai international KIX when the conversation is in English

Do people pronounce that as "kay-eye-eks" or "kicks"?
posted by madcaptenor at 9:22 AM on July 3, 2023

kicks
posted by emmling at 9:28 AM on July 3, 2023

Kind of orthogonal, but Seattle-Tacoma Airport is always SeaTac, never SEA, and in fact resides in the city of SeaTac, incorporated in 1989.
posted by bq at 9:48 AM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Edmonton has taken to calling our whole city by our airport code, YEG. There are all sorts of YEG events attended by yeggers. It's weird, but Edmonton is a bit of a mouthful....
posted by unlapsing at 9:58 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is a trick question to me, as I work in logistics and all of our branch offices are known by their nearest major airport's IATA codes. Which is still sometimes confusing. CDG will always mean "Paris" to me...
posted by lhauser at 10:01 AM on July 3, 2023

Several of the other LA area airports are referred to by their code, since "the airport" is so ambiguous. Especially SNA, which is known variously as John Wayne, Orange County, and Santa Ana.
posted by Horselover Fat at 10:34 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think madcaptenor has the right idea above when saying ”I wonder if it matters if you're in an area with multiple airports”; I can report that not one person I met in Hong Kong while living there ever called our airport (HKG) “aitch-kay-gee” in English, except for people who talked about airports all the time, like aviation enthusiasts, travel agents and airline staff, and even then, usually only among themselves. It’s a bit jargon-y for the average person, perhaps, since there really is just the one airport in most people’s lives!

Notably, this was also true in Hong Kong’s main language, Cantonese, which is otherwise sprinkled with English and English-derived words and phrases in everyday speech; people just used the Cantonese word for “airport” when discussing it rather than using the code. It may also just have been shorter or simpler to do this; like in English, the Cantonese word is two syllables; HKG is three. Cantonese also doesn’t have -ch sounds at the ends of words.

I have to believe the same would be true in, say, Singapore or Malta.
posted by mdonley at 11:24 AM on July 3, 2023

A few times, I have seen people refer to San Francisco as SFO, usually along the lines of "I'm staying in SFO for two days, what sights should I see?"

I have to stop myself from saying "well, there's a neat costume exhibit in the international terminal".
posted by alexei at 11:41 AM on July 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

note: not only PDX for the airport, but also for the state university in the city

(Portland State University lost to Penn State in the acronym wars, but fortunately pdx.edu was just sitting there on the shelf)
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 11:59 AM on July 3, 2023

Best answer: I don't think people who live in Portland say they're going to PDX when they mean they're going to the airport. PDX can refer to the whole city, so it would be super unclear what you mean. I think folks here say they're going to "the airport."

I get that folks outside of Portland might say they're flying into PDX or Portland (and PDX in this case would make it clear you mean Portland, Oregon and not Portland, Maine), and yes, PDX is the name of the airport, but if, for example, I was talking about something being near the airport or wanting a ride to or from the airport, I would not say PDX.
posted by bluedaisy at 12:01 PM on July 3, 2023

And also! That the airport is RDU/Raleigh-Durham sometimes means that folks who don't live there refer to Raleigh-Durham as if it is one city. So I think when people say they're going to "Raleigh-Durham," that's a shibboleth to tell you they're not from there. RDU is the airport, sure, and folks in the region use that name to refer to the airport. But anyone who says they're going to Raleigh-Durham for a week sounds like someone who has no idea where they're actually going.
posted by bluedaisy at 12:04 PM on July 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

YVR (Vancouver BC) is used quite frequently.
posted by cgg at 12:27 PM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

CMH (Columbus, Ohio) isn’t common, but isn’t uncommon. There’s a local TV station with the call letters WCMH, for example. I get the sense it used to be more common - the rise of the execrable “C-Bus” in the early 2000s seeks to have eaten into “CMH”’s market share. I also might be somewhat biased because one of my closest friends in Columbus has the initials CMH.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:05 PM on July 3, 2023

Orlando International is locally referred to as OIA, even though its IATA code is MCO for its predecessor, McCoy Field. The old airport that is now named Orlando Executive Airport retained the ORL code.
posted by Badgermann at 1:11 PM on July 3, 2023

The commercial airport in Northwest Arkansas is pretty much always called by its IATA (and FAA, sometimes they're different!) code, XNA. "The airport" used to be FYV before XNA was built in the 90s, so using the code avoids ambiguity among people who have lived there a long while, and absolutely nobody wants to say "Northwest Arkansas RegionalNational Airport" in conversation.

In a bit of a reverse move, few in or near Oklahoma City would say they're "going to OKC" to mean they're going to the airport. OKC is almost always used as a referent to the city itself.
posted by wierdo at 1:22 PM on July 3, 2023

The Austin airport is AUS but everybody calls it ABIA (Austin–Bergstrom International Airport) which is not the official 3 letter designation, which many people don't know.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 3:34 PM on July 3, 2023

Someone unthread said HNL and I totally do not agree with that. My family lives on Oahu and my brother flew for Hawaiian, I never heard anyone say HNL out loud.

(A former Hawaiian employee started a Montreal style bagel place on the windward side called Empty Elle, for MTL.)
posted by vunder at 3:46 PM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'll admit to using the airport code for Fukuoka more than I probably should...
posted by Runes at 4:11 PM on July 3, 2023

Along with SFO the airport and town, the people I worked with would call San Jose airport and town SJC.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 6:13 PM on July 3, 2023

(And as people have said about other places, unless context makes it clear both SFO and SJC would be the town not the airport.)
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 6:15 PM on July 3, 2023

BART changed its route names to include "OAK Airport" last year, pronounced "O. A. K." on the PA. I find it corny and don't know actual people who say that, but maybe they exist outside my bubble (though per their comment, LionIndex is with me).
posted by aws17576 at 10:35 PM on July 3, 2023

I preferentially refer to IATAs when meaning the city for almost all uses (ie DTW upthread is one I fly out of often). PDX is the city or the airport, but NYC and DC I distinguish the place from the airport because there are options. ATL is only ever ATL, ORD, same (yes, I forget midway, but in my defense I lived on the blue line so ORD).

I was in SLC last week and that's all I called it, but that may be because I flew into the wrong airport at last year's conference (louisville/lexington)! Should have called it SDF, but LEX was all i could think of for L-city KY names :( Looking forward to next year in PIT.

I can't ever remember kauai and have to look it up every time - it's LIH (guess I need to go more often, right?!).
posted by esoteric things at 11:57 PM on July 3, 2023

In addition to RDU and CLT above (although you might hear Charlotte Douglas as well), there are PTI (Greensboro) and ILM (Wilmington). Occasionally people will refer to the entire city as ILM, but like all NC cities, it has its own variety of nicknames and this happens to be one of them. PTI, however, is always PTI.

ETA this is such a thing™ here that in the little shopping section of Our State, you could buy snazzy hats with the codes on them, but only for the Big Three. Port City left out again, as usual.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 1:06 AM on July 4, 2023

To build on what Rykey said, here in Cincinnati, the major airport is CVG (Cee-Vee-Gee). For those not in the know it is a weird case where the airport is actually across the river in Kentucky and its official name is Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport which is a mouthful. While "the airport" is used and sometimes in newscasts the formal name is used, CVG is used frequently. I think it is stems from the fact that it is very plausible for someone living in the Cincinnati metro to fly out of CVG, Dayton, Columbus, Indianapolis, Louisville or Lexington. So having to refer to which airport is important.
posted by mmascolino at 6:28 AM on July 4, 2023

I used to work for an airline and my close friend was a flight attendant for awhile. We call every city by an airport code when we talk about them. They’re much better at it than me.
posted by bendy at 7:21 AM on July 4, 2023

sara is disenchanted, it’s funny you bring up
PTI because it’s my new hometown airport and it’s adorable! But kind of confusing: The official IATA code is GSO, but the airport authority calls it PTI in all their communications. Like others above, I just call it “the airport” in conversation (but then have to clarify that I don’t mean CLT, my former hometown airport, a perpetual mess, or RDU).
posted by Sweetie Darling at 7:33 AM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

PTI is actually really easy to fly in and out of; Charlotte is a mess because of the American hub. If I hop from ILM to CLT (because I’m cheap and always flying American) I will *always* have to book it from like concourse E to B and vice versa for the return trip in 20 minutes for the connection. I have family in Charlotte, so if I’m going to be gone somewhere for awhile I’ll just drive to Charlotte and fly out. I have two friendquaintances who are pilots for American and that’s usually what they do as well (they keep apartments in Charlotte). I have a neighbor in the neighborhood behind me who is a flight attendant for Delta, so she lives in Raleigh “full-time” but has a house here, where she usually is on weekends she’s not working.

This question makes me want to ask all of them what they say/hear, and if it’s regional or airline specific or what have you.

ETA: you’re right about GSO, but like you, I’ve never heard it referred to as such.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 8:18 PM on July 4, 2023

Toronto has two commercial airports: it is not uncommon for the larger to be called YYZ
A lot of Canadian airports have IATA codes that start with Y, which drives me crazy, because the radio phonetic code for 'Y' is 'Yankee'.

Seconding YYZ, and not just amongst Rush fans.
For those of us who are not Rush fans, here is Rush's song about the airport, YYZ. That riff in the intro is 'YYZ' in Morse code.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 10:27 AM on July 7, 2023 [1 favorite]