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Old Apr 26, 2023 | 7:13 am
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OhDoctor
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Originally Posted by Engines turn
What an interesting question! I couldn't find a free authoritative list of IATA airport codes and names, but Wikipedia has a well-formatted, well-documented list for each letter of the alphabet of airports by IATA code. Who exactly compiled it, and who did the translating for non-English titles, I don't know, but I used that to compile what I hope is a fairly complete list of every facility with a 3-letter IATA code that doesn't have the word "Airport" in it's (maybe) official name.

Posting the list? A little more difficult. I found 298 civilian facilities with IATA codes and runways, from AAJ (Cayana Airstrip, in Awaradam, Suriname) to ZUD (Pupelde Airfield, in Ancud, Chile). This list includes Albuquerque Int'l Sunport, (ABQ), Jorge Newbury Airpark in Buenos Aires (AEP), Boise Air Terminal (Gowan Field) (BOI), Dallas Love Field (DAL - and I checked on their website - no mention of the word "Airport" in any of their self-references), Midland International Air and Space Port (MAF), Eppley Airfield in Omaha (OMA), Portland International Jetport in Maine (PWM), Roswell International Air Center in New Mexico (ROW), and Yakima Air Terminal (McAllister Field) (YKM). I'm sure there are others of the 298 with commercial service.

Then there are 287 apparently military faciliies with IATA codes, from Andrews Air Force Base, the home base of Air Force One, in Maryland (ADW), to CFB Greenwood in Greenwood, Nova Scotia (YZX), Canada's largest Atlantic coast air force base.

On top of that, there are 151 seaplane bases with IATA codes, starting with AFK (Kondavattavan Tank Seaplane Base in Ampara, Sri Lanka) and ending with ZTS (Tahsis Water Aerodrome) in Tahsis, British Columbia. This category contains some wonderfully named places, such as the Parry Sound/Frying Pan Island-Sans Souci Water Aerodrome and the Golden Horn Lodge Seaplane Base.

That makes 736 facilities so far.

Finally, five that I'm not sure count because they don't get fixed-wing flights: Three Heliports in the IATA list - DIO (Diomede, Alaska), IOT (Illorsuit Heliport of Avannaata, Greenland), and TLG (Tulagi Heliport in Tulagi, Solomon Islands), and two train stations with IATA codes - the main railway stations in Bern and Geneva.

Trivially, the airport with the name that has the most letters before you get to the word "Airport" when translated to English is São Paulo/Guarulhos–Governador André Franco Montoro International Airport, where you have to chew through 67 letters (and the legendary Sao Paolo traffic) to get to the airport.
Wow, that's quite a bit of detective work. Sounds like we already had many of the notable US locations on the list. I think using "regular, commercial passenger service" as a qualifier eliminates a good number of the others you mentioned. But I added YKM to the list. BOI is listed as "Boise Airport" on Google Flights and Wikipedia (ditto for Love Field); For BOI, I'm wondering if the Air Terminal/Gowan Field moniker refers to military operations specifically?
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