The Burbank Bob Hope Airport is served by Amtrak (and Metrolink) and shares the code BUR...almost makes sense in this case!
Before the 1930s, existing airports used a two-letter abbreviation based on the weather stations at the airports. At that time, "LA" served as the designation for Los Angeles Airport. But with the rapid growth in the aviation industry the designations expanded to three letters c. 1947, and "LA" became "LAX." The letter "X" has no specific meaning in this identifier.Why was LAX chosen and where did the code first appear, train station or airport?
Before the three letter codes were standardized for airports, the National Weather Service two letter location codes were used for the airport at the location. That is where LA for Los Angeles, PD for Portland and PH for Phoenix came from. When the 3 letter codes came about these were simply converted to LAX, PDX and PHX.Before the 1930s, existing airports used a two-letter abbreviation based on the weather stations at the airports. At that time, "LA" served as the designation for Los Angeles Airport. But with the rapid growth in the aviation industry the designations expanded to three letters c. 1947, and "LA" became "LAX." The letter "X" has no specific meaning in this identifier.Why was LAX chosen and where did the code first appear, train station or airport?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_International_Airport
I believe there's a few others around the world that had an X added in the same way.
It's BUR. You can check for it under location code.Incidentally Burbank Bob Hope does not seem to have any IATA code as far as I can tell. The code BUR is just the Amtrak code. Neither does Chicago Union Station or Milwaukee, suggesting there fore the current non-preparedness to issue airline codeshare tickets on Amtrak through Milwaukee Airport to either of those two stations.
Meaning Los Angels union passenger terminal.Since the topic of abbreviations has been mentioned, just wanted to point out that it's LAUPT, not LAUS.
Precisely correct, although I still think of it as LAUPT. Name change makes sense, most of its life it was a truly a terminal, meaning trains originated and terminated there and did not go through. Before Amtrak started Santa Barbara (now San Luis Obispo, too) - San Diego service the only train for which LAUPT was an intermediate station was the pre-1942 Sunset Limited (San Francisco-New Orleans).It used to be LAUPT. Its new owner officially changed it to LAUS. So yeah. It *is* LAUS now.
- Note that the list of Amtrak station codes is not the same as the IATA station codes.
New York had the additional problem of having two rail station viz NYP and NYG.For whatever reason, when Arrow came into being and the three character station codes with it, Amtrak tended to adopt the IATA codes for cities that didn't have multiple airports or multiple train stations (which is probably why Chicago is CHI, not ORD or MDW, or New York was NYP and NYG, not JFK or LGA).
Amtrak seems to like to refer to Toronto as TWO or something like that AFAIR.Personally, I like what VIA Rail Canada did. They use 4 character codes that are distinctly their own, VCVR for Vancouver, TRTO for Toronto. You can't mix those up. Although parenthetically, Amtrak never did use the IATA codes for Canadian cities. Maybe they didn't like the "Y". And I have never heard of Toronto Union Station being commonly referred to as "TRTO".
Back in the days JFK was not even JFK. It was Idlewild. Most airports are not referred to by their IATA code by anyone other than the air-geeks. Orlando International is known colloquially as OIA, not MCO. I have not heard any man on the street in Newark call Newark Airport EWR. If you tell a taxi driver in New Orleans that you want to go to MSY he'll probably look at you strangely.Also, back in the mid-70s when they did this, using the IATA codes as the actual place names for the airports was much less common than it is now. Even LAX, probably the bellwether for the practice, was more commonly known as LA International back then (I know, I was there). The codes were really just codes on the tickets and the baggage tags then (except for JFK, which was always known as JFK, but that probably started was because its namesake was known as JFK, not because it was the airport's IATA code), so it wasn't a big deal then as it is now.
That I agree with wholeheartedly.With all that said, I am probably one of the most adamant people that Los Angeles Union Station is NOT LAX. It is LA Union Station, LAUS, LAUPT but NEVER "LAX". I guarantee you that not a single person in Southern California thinks of that pretty building on Alameda at the 101 as "LAX", it is "Union Station". "LAX" is reserved for the ugly, curdled mess 15 miles or so to the southwest.
Travel agents have almost completely disappeared and DIY bookings make up something like 99% of all tickets sold in the US. As a result nearby major airport codes have become common knowledge among average everyday people. If you asked a working age local resident to take you to "MSY" you'd probably be asked if you meant the airport. On the other hand if you asked a local resident from generation X/Y/M to take you to "Idlewild" you'd probably get nothing but weird looks and shoulder shrugs because nobody other than air geeks would have any clue what the heck you were talking about.Back in the days JFK was not even JFK. It was Idlewild. Most airports are not referred to by their IATA code by anyone other than the air-geeks. Orlando International is known colloquially as OIA, not MCO. I have not heard any man on the street in Newark call Newark Airport EWR. If you tell a taxi driver in New Orleans that you want to go to MSY he'll probably look at you strangely.
That would be mainly because there is nothing called Idlewild anymore.Travel agents have almost completely disappeared and DIY bookings make up something like 99% of all tickets sold in the US. As a result nearby major airport codes have become common knowledge among average everyday people. If you asked a working age local resident to take you to "MSY" you'd probably be asked if you meant the airport. On the other hand if you asked a local resident from generation X/Y/M to take you to "Idlewild" you'd probably get nothing but weird looks and shoulder shrugs because nobody other than air geeks would have any clue what the heck you were talking about.Back in the days JFK was not even JFK. It was Idlewild. Most airports are not referred to by their IATA code by anyone other than the air-geeks. Orlando International is known colloquially as OIA, not MCO. I have not heard any man on the street in Newark call Newark Airport EWR. If you tell a taxi driver in New Orleans that you want to go to MSY he'll probably look at you strangely.
There are multiple international flights out of Bergstrom today. I'm guessing there was a delay between the domestic soft opening and the formal customs and immigration opening? I don't fly in/out of Austin much (SAT has similar routes/frequencies) but when I have I always used AUS without issue.Once the Airport was moved to the old Bergstrom Air Force Base and became Austin Bergstrom International, the code remained AUS. (even though there were No International Flights! )When one enters faux bookings on web sites the code that seems to work for most is ABI????
Denver retained the code DEN when a flash cut over was done from Stapleton to Denver International. Of course locally DIA is used more often than DEN, somewhat like in Orlando OIA is used more often than MCO. The other "Orlando Airport" is simply called Sanford or sometimes Orlando-Sanford. And for some odd convoluted reason Melbourne Airport is sometimes referred to as Orlando-Melbourne, even though it is 65 miles away from Orlando.Yes, but by the 70s, it was JFK (renamed 1964?). I know that practice is far from universal and many, many airports, aren't commonly called by the IATA abbreviations, as you point out. But a lot are these days, PDX, SFO, DIA, DFW, ORD (to an extent) just off the top of my head, are often called by their abbreviation.
MCO is the only major airport in the Orlando area. It is slated for more than doubling of capacity with the progressive construction of the South Terminal over the next decade or so. Sanford is used by very few airlines, and AFAICT, none of the majors in a big way. It is also MCO that is slated to get all the multi-modal connectivity over the next decade too.Is Sanford that weird warehouse looking airport with no windows facing the aircraft? I'm not exactly a fan of MCO but IIRC it still looks worlds better than SFB.
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