Canadian airport IATA codes

[18-Wheeler]

Got an email from a friend of mine, and he asks this question ->

"Hey Bill, how come the Canadian IATA codes don't bear any resemblance to the names of the cities in which they are located?

Los Angeles is LAX, Kingsford Smith in Sydney is SYD, Wellington is WLG ... Toronto is YYZ?

Did some IATA official suffer childhood abuse by a Canadian?"

Ideas?

[Mad (Flt) Scientist]

Part of the consequences of the Official Languages Policy.

Airport codes in canada are now equally incomprehensible in both English and French.

[merlinxx]

Suggest you ask IATA @ www.iata.org

[767-300ER]

Yes they are incomprehensible...but unlike European IATA/ICAO airport codes, Canada and the USA just remove the prefix C or the K and its the same...too bad others couldn't make things that easy...

[AtoBsafely]

Maybe Canada just got stuck at the back of the line when the codes were assigned, and all that was left were bunches of Qs, Xs, Ys and Zs. If they had first choice, maybe SYD would be a little airport in Nova Scotia, LON a hop from Toronto and CAL an oil centre in western Canada!

Just a guess!

[Tree]

Probably by the same people who picked Ottawa as the place for the national capital. There were hundreds of better choices.

[barit1]

Interesting side note: US and Canada both progressive, powerful nations -

but until deregulation there were NO direct flights connecting their capitals! :}

[Lear45XR]

If I remember correctly:

C=Canada
Y=Yes (as in Yes Wx is available for the station) This comes from way back...

Canada used 2 letter identifiers to identify weather reporting stations. Those 2 letter codes then had either "Y" or "W" added in front of them. Y meant they were co-located with an airport. Or "Y"es there is an airport there too. Or it is a weather station "W"ithout and airport for those that had the W in front.

They changed the last letter to "X" if the code was already in use by another city. And changed it to "Z" if the code was already in use by a U.S. airport.

[Tree]

The Canucks did not have a Boston tea party. They kept many of the colonial masters' quaint systems. As in England the first 2 letters identify the country and that only leaves the last 2 to identify the airport. Works fine in a tiny country with few airports but in a large country with many airports you soon run out of logical combinations.

I believe there were other airports built earlier in the Toronto area that used up the logical combinations. YYZ was on the scene later and by that time they were down to the end of the alphabet for choices.

Lear45XR: I'm not sure about the Y and W points but a 3 letter ident. starting with a Z is a private airport as in ZBB (Boundary Bay Airport, south of Vancouver)

[troff]

Tree,
Really, be serious.
Hundreds of better choices for Ottawa as the Capital?
Come on now, if you have ever studied Canadian history, you'd know exactly why Ottawa was/ is the best choice for the seat of Parliament.

[604guy]

Lear45XR:

Don't believe your "Y" suggestion holds water. CYES = Edmundston, New Brunswick. No weather reporting, never has been. :}

[evansb]

Queen Victoria chose Ottawa (nee Bytown) as Canada's capital on December 31, 1857. Ottawa is situated on the Ottawa (Outaouais) River which flows between Ontario and Quebec, Canada's two solitudes. How appropriate, or should I say apropos? Kingston was Canada's first capital, but it was located by the St. Lawrence River, across from the United States, and therefore deemed geographically vulnerable.

Regarding Canadian location identifiers, and remember that is what they do, identify a location. It has been said that as Canada's airports and airways were being established on the brink of World War II, the wisdom of our forefathers deemed it important to disguise military locations, specifically their radio navigation beacon idents, so that Axis aircraft and ships, etc., would be unable to determine their exact location, nor the nature of a certain facility, particularly if using just the navigation aid. The practice was abandoned in the 1950s. Examples of military fields that were disguised by their idents are: YXX - Abbotsford. YQQ - Comox. YYJ - Victoria. YAZ - Tofino. YXY - Whitehorse. YVQ - Norman Wells. I have about four dozen more examples. Joint civilian-military fields that were deemed acceptable risks had logical idents, such as VR for Vancouver. QB for Quebec City. Some joint civil-military fields hinted at only one letter, such as Montreal - UL. Lethbridge, QL, Medicine Hat - XH. Calgary - YC. There are exceptions, to be sure, but Fritz would be hard pressed to identify Gander by a beacon that identified "QX", and "YQ" for Churchill. Mr. Matsui would be puzzled by the morse-code "ZT" in aiding him to find Queen Charlotte Strait. So there you have it. Also, note that Canada was a founding member of ICAO, presently headquartered in Montreal. ICAO drew up the coded aeronautical boundaries of the world to a greater extent than IATA, as IATA's central thrust was to benefit airlines, not aviation as a whole.

[barit1]

The Rideau Canal through the center of Ottawa was built to provide a commerce route to the sea, safe from their treacherous neighbors south of the border. :}

Today it provides a unique winter commuting route for ice skaters. :ok:

[WHBM]

ICAO allocate the first two characters of the ICAO code to the various worldwide regions and countries, but let them decide their own local coding of the last two characters, so there are a range of different approaches. Thus Britain got E for Europe and G for Great Britain, then chose to have the third character showing the area, last character for individual airport within that. Germany chose to do it a bit differently, assigned ED for Europe, Deutschland, then they chose D for major airports and last character meaningful, hence EDDF for Frankfurt and EDDH for Hamburg.

USA was always going to have a vast number, so they were just given one prefix letter, K, and allowed three to identify the individual airport. As 3-character airport codes were already in local use there they just stuck the K on the front to give the ICAO code, hence KMIA for Miami etc. When IATA codes came along they just used these existing 3-character codes.

Canada were ICAO region C, country Y, thus like most other countries they only had two remaining characters to play with. They tried to make the remainder a bit meaningful, thus CYVR for Vancouver or CYTO for Toronto. When IATA came along Canada and US were in the same area and the approach to chop off the first letter to make the IATA code was adopted for both countries, thus all Canadian IATA codes start with Y.

Canada is a big country so all the good codes got used up quickly. As new airports opened they had to make do with what was left. When Toronto Pearson was opened to replace Downsview they had to make do with YZ as a suffix, thus ICAO code CYYZ and IATA code YYZ. Similar elsewhere round the country.

[JanetFlight]

Quote:
[Did some IATA official suffer childhood abuse by a Canadian?]

:) :) :p :p :) :) :p :p :yuk: :O :) :) :)

Maybe its only to simplify things up...Both on Canadian and USA Airports, almost 90% have their IATA codes similar to the 4-Letter ICAO Codes, except for the 1st Letter...C for Can and K for States....Well, me thinks..;) :rolleyes:

[18-Wheeler]

Thanks chaps/chapettes, I believe all that is good enough an answer for him.