L'International Air Transport Association (IATA) defines a three-letter code for airports and a two-letter code for individual major airlines. These codes, which are intended to be globally unique, are used for ticketing, flight booking and on baggage tags.
The codes are not unique: in fact, 323 of the 17,576 possible codes are used by more than one airport. The characters highlighted on the labels that are placed on baggage at check-in at the airport are an example of how these codes are used; they indicate, in fact, which is the destination airport of the baggage.
ICAO
The codes ICAO are assigned byInternational Civil Aviation Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations. These four-letter codes are used by aviators for flight planning and navigation; are separate and different from IATA codes, which are generally used by travel companies for airline timetables, reservations and baggage tags. For example, the IATA code for Heathrow Airport's London is LHR and its ICAO code is EGLL. ICAO codes are commonly seen by passengers and the general public on flight tracking services, although passengers will more often see IATA codes, on their tickets and on their baggage tags.
Since IATA is used by travel companies for ticketing and baggage handling, an airport without scheduled flights can have an ICAO code but no IATA code.
Code search
- Retrieve IATA code (in English)
- IATA airport code search (On Italian Wikipedia)
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- Theme: Traveling by plane
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Wikipedia contains an entry concerning IATA airport code
