thanks for all the responses!

It just seems that most airlines I fly seem to make sense.

Also, my understanding was 'X' meant international - such as LAX, BHX...

I'm flying SYD-SIN-LHR (no DXB for me!)

And with the airports, the vast majority are names after colonial/empire times - BOM, MAA, SGN etc.

QF seems right for Qantas. When an announcement is made in a terminal for "all passengers please go to gate to board Qantas Flight 1", it seems fair to call Qantas Flight 1 QF1.

Hence QF seems a fair code to use for Qantas.

But announcements for all airlines are of nature "passengers for XXX flight N" ; don't see that meaning anything

"Passengers for Emirates Flight 412...." for example

And then you have the canadian x airports

Don't you mean "y" - such as YYZ, YUL, YVR

Older airfields (1930s) used to use the 2 letter abbreviation of their weather station. When they started needing more codes, they added another letter.

Aaah, but the "H" in MH means "Hospitality" ;) :p :)


Another example for both of these, a couple of years ago I flew YM out of TGD. It wasn't my first flight on YM, I had a few flights on YM many years earlier around 1990/1. (YM= Montenegro Airlines now and many years ago it was Compass a long since dead airline in Australia). TGD is Podgorica, Montenegro, which used to be called Titograd.