Flying SUX! The Weirdest Stories Behind Our Airport Codes

You see them everywhere : On highway signs , airplane ticket , and even humblebraggy Twitter updates . Some are obvious and some make no sense . But what do these three - letter aerodrome computer code really think of ?

The streamlined newfangled siteAirport Codeslets you bounce from airport to airdrome explore the codes and their source . Here are some of the more amazing , challenging , and just obviously foreign account behind those three little letters .

LAX , PDX , PHX : The cause so many airports , like Los Angeles , Portland and Phoenix have a computer code that ends in X is because up until the 1930s , airports only had two - letter code . So LA became LAX , and so forth .

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SFO : The one exception to this rule is San Francisco , which want to use the O at the closing of its name .

EWR : The Navy snapped up all the N codes , so Newark had to make do with the only useable letters in its name .

IAD : Dulles International Airport used to be DIA , but it was misspelled as DCA , another DC - region drome . So the codification was changed to avoid mix-up .

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ORD : Chicago ’s major airport ’s code is n’t a bad spelling of O’Hare . It used to be Orchard Field .

SUX : Poor Sioux City , Iowa try out to get its code change , to no service . SUX for them .

avoirdupois : Sorry , Fresno Yosemite International Airport , you were originally named Fresno Air Terminal . This is why you ’re FAT .

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YVR , YWG : In one of the only country - wide computer code model , Canadian airport like Vancouver and Winnipeg all have codes start with Y. Why Y ? No one cognize .

YYZ , YUL : However , these two Canadian airports have codes that no one can explain . Toronto ( YYZ ) and Montreal ( YUL ) might be named for nearby railway stoppage and radio station , severally .

What are some of your favorites that we did n’t mention ? [ Airport CodesviaCo . purpose ]

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