Originally Posted by ttjoseph

There is nothing ambiguous about NYC/WAS/CHI/LON/PAR et cetera. These are city codes that each refer to all of that city's major airports, not any single airport. Like 3-letter airport codes, they were assigned by IATA. They are widely used and perfectly conventional (especially on FT). There are few of them relative to airport codes, and to my knowledge no new ones are being assigned; simply complaining on this thread about how bad they are has probably caused you to learn all the ones you are likely to need