Originally Posted by
dcutcher
my understanding is that many don't know which airport is referred to by (what I can only refer to as) the "conventional, 3-letter airport codes", e.g., IAD, LGA, ORD, etc., and are asking for a mouse-over or some other quick access to the expansion of those codes.
The intention of my post was to point out:
(1) in addition to those "conventional, 3-letter airport codes", there exist ALSO alternate, NON-conventional 3-letter codes, e.g., "WAS" for Reagan and Dulles, "CHI" for both Midway and Ohare. Any discussion using those alternate, non-conventional codes is fraught with ambiguity; exactly WHICH airport (of LGA, JFK and EWR, possibly BWI) is being referred to as "NYC?":
(2) any quick access to codes expansion that includes the alternates is bound to promote their inherent ambiguity.
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
Would you rather write "ORD/MDW-EWR/LGA/JFK-LHR/LGW/STN" or "CHI-NYC-LON" when describing a routing?
(By the way, for clarity's sake, please try and use some whitespace when you post
)