Gin Slinger

Okay, the E in EGGD means it's a UK airport, but what does the rest stand for?

Are they just random or is there method to the madness?

overstress

No, that's not what the E means. EG is a UK airport. ED is a German one

The rest of it is either

A) Random

B) Some historical, some geographical

Birmingham=EGBB, Coventry=EGBE, they're just neighbours.

EGVN=Brize, (Virgin Atlantic Airport?)

There is no UK-wide obvious system

Gin Slinger

....arr....you spotted the deliberate mistake!

Volume

First letter is region, E=northern Europe, L=southern Europe etc.

Second Letter is Country, ED=Germany (D=Deutschland), EG=UK (G=Great Britain), LO = Austria ( sterreich), LF = France etc.

Third letter is used (in germany, probably in other countries it´s the same) either for special types of airfield, EDD = international Airport, EDDK = Cologne, EDDF = Frankfurt, EDDH = Hamburg etc.
EDC = military airfield operated by foreign airforce, EDCM = Aachen Merzbrück while operated by belgian helicopter squad (changed to EDKA when the belgians left).
For small airports, third letter is equal to last letter of the nearest international airport, EDKA = Aachen, EDKB = Bonn, both close to EDDK = Cologne. EDMO = Oberpfaffenhofen, close to EDDM = Munich, EDHK = Kiel, close to EDDH = Hamburg, EDFH = Hahn, so close to Frankfurt that some chaep irish airlines confuse those


Last letter is mostly first letter of airport name, EDKB = Bonn, EDDK = Köln (Cologne), EDKA = Aachen, EDCM = Merzbrück, EDDH = Hamburg, EDMO = Oberpfaffenhofen etc.
Some exception are the military airfields operated by the german airforce, they are named ET istead of ED, for example ETNU = Neubrandenburg, ETSI = Ingolstadt-Manching, ETNL = Rostock-Laage, ETMN = Nordholz.

hope this helps

brimstone

Gin Slinger - In the UK the third letter historically refers to the Communication Centre where a Flight Plan from an airfield was processed.

In the case of Oxford, EGTK, the "T" is part of EGTT the designator for the West Drayton Centre and obviously the "K" stands for Kidlington.

phd

Where can I get hold of, or view, a complete list of all the airport identifiers? This woud be useful when reading TAFs and METARs as sometimes I do not recognise a particular identifier.

ETOPS

Try Thales - used to be called "Aerad " they publish various flight guides for airlines etc.

Gin Slinger

thanks everyone, Brimstone in particular....EGTK - makes sense!

Captain104

Volume

"Last letter is mostly first letter of airport name"....
Understand EDDV stands for Vannover and EDDW for Wremen?
So we underline mostly and sun is shining again.
Regards

Silkman

Just to add a little extra to the explanation, the ICAO four letter indicators are formulated and arranged to identify the geographical location of airfields and or base stations (i.e. CFMU at Brussels and Swanwick etc) that are part of the AFTN (aeronautical fixed telecommunications network).

For AFTN purposes, the world is divided into 22 geographic regions, with each region assigned a letter of the alphabet.
(I,J,Q and X are not used to denote a region).

Several areas use the 3 letter IATA code prefixed by an area code, E.G. KJFK, where K is the USA and JFK is obviously Kennedy, New York, CYVR, where C is Canada and YVR is Vancouver.

There is a website with all or certainly most of the larger airfield designators but for the life of me I can't remember the address but i'm sure if you put ICAO designations in a search engine it should bring something up.

Noddy Staltern

A decode for ICAO/IATA identifiers is available here:

http://www.ar-group.com/icaoiata.htm

A listing of IATA codes here:

http://www.aviationjobsonline.com/ai.../citycode.html

Denti

For all guys who can read (and understand) german here is a thread with a good description of the ICAO-Codes in germany.

Here is another page (in english) about ICAO/IATA-codes with some information regarding coding/decoding.

Denti