MeridianMERIDIAN

IATA Airport Code

geography.transportation.iata_code

International Air Transport Association airport code (3 letters). Identifies airports for flight bookings and schedules (e.g., JFK, LAX, CDG).

Try a value

IATA Airport Code's rule accepts it.

Reads it as JFK

Use it

Shell
finetype infer -i 'JFK' --mode column
# → geography.transportation.iata_code
DuckDB
SELECT ft_infer('JFK');
-- → 'geography.transportation.iata_code'
Cast template: {col} is your column
UPPER(CAST({col} AS VARCHAR))
Casts to
VARCHAR
Membership list
iata airports

Pattern

Regular expression
^[A-Z]{3}$
ValueLengthShape
JFK3matches
LAX3matches
CDG3matches
LHR3matches
NRT3matches
JF2rejected: one character short

Background

Origin

An IATA airport code is a three-letter code defined by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).[1] The rules for assigning IATA location identifier codes are laid down in IATA Resolution 763.[2] IATA states that the main objective of Resolution 763 is to ensure that each three-letter code is unique.[2] The IATA airport code is administered by IATA's headquarters in Montreal, Canada.[1] IATA airport codes are published semi-annually in the IATA Airline Coding Directory.[1]

According to IATA, airport coding first began in the 1930s, when airlines typically chose their own two-letter codes.[2] IATA says that by the late 1940s there were too many airports for the number of two-letter codes available, and the system shifted to three-letter codes.[2] Los Angeles International Airport was originally just LA and became LAX in 1947, according to IATA.[2] IATA stepped in during the 1960s, when the airlines decided they needed a standardised process to avoid confusion.[2] IATA came to manage the codes on behalf of the industry as the trade association for the global airline industry, following the formation of airline working groups.[2]

When choosing a new code, IATA's first choice is an unassigned code using the first three letters of the location's name.[2] IATA's second choice for a new code is an unassigned combination, preferably starting with the first letter of the location's name.[2] IATA says the convention of Canadian codes beginning with Y dates back to the pre-WW II era and is believed to be related to two-letter identifiers for weather stations or radio location beacons.[2] IATA notes that the Y convention for Canadian airports is no longer automatically observed.[2] The United States Navy reserved codes beginning with N, which is one reason Newark, New Jersey has the irregular code EWR.[1]

Use

IATA location codes are issued only on a commercial airline's request, and usually the first airline flying to a location requests its code.[2]

IATA describes its three-letter location codes as used for strictly commercial airline purposes, while ICAO four-letter codes serve flight operations and cover both commercial and non-commercial airports.[2] When a file mixes three-letter and four-letter airport codes, treat the three-letter values as IATA and the four-letter values as ICAO rather than forcing one pattern on the whole column. (Meridian's view)

IATA says assigned three-letter location identifiers are considered permanent and are almost never changed.[2] Washington Dulles International Airport's designator was changed from DIA to IAD to avoid confusion with Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA).[2] There are over 17,000 possible code combinations, of which approximately 11,300 are currently assigned, according to IATA.[2] IATA assigns approximately 40-50 new location codes annually.[2] Matching the pattern of three capital letters is not enough to prove a value is a real code, so validate against a current reference list as well. (Meridian's view) IATA's airline and airport code search on iata.org is an official source for codes assigned by IATA.[3]

Where you'll meet it

The OpenFlights airport database carries a 3-letter IATA code field for each airport, null if not assigned or unknown.[4] The OpenFlights route database records each route's source and destination airport as a 3-letter IATA or 4-letter ICAO code.[4]

Sources

  1. [1]IATA airport code - Wikipediasecondary source
  2. [2]IATA Location Codesorganisation
  3. [3]IATA - Codes - Airline and Airport Codes Searchorganisation
  4. [4]OpenFlights: Airport and airline datadataset

How it's detected

Transform uppercases. 3-letter code. Examples: JFK (New York), LAX (Los Angeles), CDG (Paris), LHR (London), NRT (Tokyo).

Schema

https://meridian.online/schemas/geography.transportation.iata_code · Frictionless type string

finetype taxonomy geography.transportation.iata_code -o json-schema

Type Registry