What do AUS and GRR have in common? [Website glitch]
 

For a year or more, when I am booking flights from my computer, if the origin or destination city is Austin TX, I will type in the airport abbreviation AUS and get two choices on the menu, AUS and GRR (Grand Rapids MI). Its only an extra click to select the right one and continue with the reservation, but I've occasionally been in a hurry and hit the GRR in error, then get a message of no service, etc. and have to start over. Its a minor annoyance, but the AUS and GRR choice happens 100% of the time regardless of the computer used (home, office, etc.) I'm sure its a minor programming error somewhere to even bring up the GRR choice (who wants to go to Michigan in the wintertime??!!), but once the rest of the SWA website is functioning perfectly, this would be a nice glitch to see corrected. Perhaps SWAVictor could pass it along to the IT folks for eventual attention.

Intrigued, so went in to test, confirmed. Then tried ATL and it also brings up Philadelphia, PA. SEA brings up Orlando, San Diego, San Antonio.

Edit: There are Sea Worlds in Orlando, San Diego, San Antonio :)

For GRR it seems to be associated with the word "Lausing". Is that a place somewhere in Michigan or just random gibberish? Otherwise sounds like a bad misspelling of Lansing.

I know it is dumb.

But to answer OP's question - they are both airports within the U.S. :p

And the ATL - PHL connection is...Atlantic City

Lausing is definitely not a place Michigan so it would appear to be an uncorrected typo as it matches GRR against both "Lausing" and "Lansing", as well as "East Lansing" (but not "East Lausing" :) )

This is fun!! Played around some more and found:

The Strip - LAS
The Big Easy - MSY
The Gods - COS
The Big Apple - LGA & ISP

Disney - MCO and all LA area airports

Capit (ol) brings up DCA, BWI and DCA. All of these have some bit of logic, which seems lacking with AUS vs GRR. Perhaps we are missing the actual word that is triggering GRR.
Now that we know that other words bring up various airports, it will be a challenge to see what else the programmers have hidden in the system to "help" us. :D

This is sadly the most fascinating thread I have come across on this website in 9 months.

The root phrase causing the match with "AUS" is "LAUSing" as noted above (you can't add anything before or after the word and still get a match). Maybe Lausing is just a common misspelling of Lansing. Or maybe someone in IT at WN typoed Lansing as Lausing at some point, and rather than correcting it, they simply added Lansing as another option for GRR. "East Lansing" (home of Michigan State University) brings up GRR as well. I would have thought WN would have added an entry for Flint redirecting to DTW after they left FNT (they added one for Akron redirecting to CLE).

Oh this is fun! I was always amused when my searches for ONT also brought up mONTego Bay, Jamaica, but I didn't know about these "keyword" searches. I wonder if they're new? But I'm playing around now to try to find some others...

• "Golden Gate" and "Silicon Valley" both bring up the 3 San Francisco Bay Area airports, SFO, OAK, SJC
• "Liberty Bell" brings up PHL
• "Mardi Gras" brings up MSY
• "Soul" brings up CEG, but I think I'm only getting part of a longer keyword that's attached to Spokane. I'm not sure what it is though...

Secondary/smaller cities that don't have an airport or Southwest service sometimes bring up nearby airports too

• "Fremont" (California) also brings up the SFO, OAK, SJC
• "Sioux City" and "Lincoln" both get OMA
• "Syracuse" brings ROC
• Nothing for "Newark" though ;)

Wild. For years I could never figure out why I got PHL when I typed ATL.

"Windy City", "Lake Michigan" = MDW and ORD
"Mile High City" , "Rockies", "Pikes Peak" = DEN
"City of Angels" = LAX,BUR,LGB,ONT,SNA
"Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" = CLE (that's a mouthful :))
"Beantown" = BOS,PVD,MHT
"Caribbean" = AUA,MBJ,NAS,PUJ,SJU

Missoula