Who assigns airline codes?


Who assigns airline codes? ICAO and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) are the two official entities that issue airport codes, but their codes are different.


How do airlines get their codes?

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an arm of the United Nations that ensures aviation regulations jive across different countries and continents, assigns codes generally used by air traffic control and by airlines in crafting their flight plans.


Do pilots use ICAO or IATA?

The ICAO airport codes, also known as location indicators, are the four-letter sequences used by pilots and air traffic controllers in their charts, on-board systems and in communications.


Do airport codes repeat?

In order to do so, IATA codes were created and are made up of a combination of three capital letters. The objective was for each airport to have its own IATA code so it would be unmistakably identified but due to aviation's continuous growth, out of the 20,000 codes there are, about 300 are already repeated.


What does Q mean in airport codes?

Codes in the range QAA–QNZ are reserved for aeronautical use; QOA–QQZ for maritime use and QRA–QUZ for all services. Q has no official meaning, but it is sometimes assigned a word with mnemonic value, such as Queen for example in QFE: Queen's field elevation, or Query, Question, reQuest.


How many airport codes are there in the world?

Welcome to World Airport Codes, the place to find over 47,000 airport codes, abbreviations, runway lengths and other airport information.


Do all airlines follow IATA?

IATA Members ?From 57 founding members in 1945, IATA now represents some 300 airlines in over 120 countries. Carrying 83% of the world's air traffic, IATA members include the world's leading passenger and cargo airlines.


Who controls airports in the US?

In the US, almost all major airports are government-owned – usually by the local federal or city government. In New York, for example, JFK and La Guardia airports are owned by the City of New York. Newark is owned by the cities of Newark and Elizabeth.


Who sets airline codes?

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), an airline trade association, assigns the airport codes you're most familiar with—the three-letters you'll see when you're booking your flight or on your ticket.


Is airline code unique?

The International Air Transport Association's (IATA) Location Identifier is a unique 3-letter code (also commonly known as IATA code) used in aviation and also in logistics to identify an airport.


Why do US airport codes start with K?

the letter ''K'' was simply assigned to the contiguous US by ICAO, in order to have a system with unique identifiers for world-wide use, instead of trying to adapt local system to match. The IATA codes had been in use already and possible duplicates could not be excluded.


Why is Chicago O Hare called Ord?

ORD – Chicago O'Hare “ORD” is a nod to the airfield's history, which started its life as Orchard Field Airport (OrchaRD) in 1945, at the site where Douglas Corporation had a wartime aircraft assembly plant.


What is the busiest airport in the world?

Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport remains the busiest airport in the world with 5.2 million seats in September 2023. The composition of the Global Top 10 Busiest Airports is also the same as last month but there are a few changes to the rankings.


Why is LAX called LAX?

The X in LAX
With the rapid growth in the aviation industry, in 1947, the identifiers expanded to three letters and LA received an extra letter to become LAX. The letter X does not otherwise have any specific meaning in this identifier.