.... I have no idea what you're ranting about. Or at least can't make any sense of it.

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.
How those alternate "codes" came into use no-one seems to know. Certainly they don't come from UA tix agents, airport luggage handlers nor even (most) FT-ers, all of whom to my experience, use the "conventional, 3-letter airport codes."
Indeed after 15 years of charging airfare I just saw the alternates used for the first time on a credit card statement and immediately suspected identity theft; what/where, exactly are "CHI" and "YTO?" I have nothing from UA saying I was headed there. Once I inquired of a 1K phone agent she just blandly said, "Oh....they...appear..."
Use of the alternate codes should be abandoned, in the interest of communication.
I understand you are probably surprised to learn of my interest in clarity.

Here's a novel idea... why don't you YOU adapt to the system, and not the other way around?

The alternate codes aren't confusing at all... if anything the posters are the ones to blame if they are ambiguous. When I say NYC, I really do mean LGA/JFK/EWR (though I have no idea how you could think BWI is even geographically close).

CHI, YTO, TYO, QLA, QSF, LON, PAR... somehow, I manage.

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 )

I would guess the poster would want us to write out the actual names of the cities, spell out the official names of the airports, and book the tickets for them.

Like I've said before, self-sufficiency is a dying art.

ALL THIs YAPping abOUT AIRpORT CODes.

So...turns out the problem was not as big as I had initially thought, and I've fixed it. It works for me with Safari 3.0 beta. Please download the widget again and try it out.

chastened and silenced, since judging from posters thus far I certainly hold a minority view.
:-:But I still hold it.

It would make it much easier if it could be done

Did you miss the previous 38 posts, including THE VERY FIRST ONE?

Doesn't that "Uncle Charlie in Santa Fe"?

HOU is the only one that is slightly confusing in that it seems to refer to both HOU the airport and HOU the city with the airports HOU and IAH. Despite this I too somehow manage to get by.

First of all Welcome PMan74 to FT.

Secondly I agree with you and IceTrojan. If I want to go to New York City, my routing would be going to NYC. I don't care which airport and have plenty of times flown into one and left through another one.

There are plenty of multiple airport areas. Kepp it open where exactly to fly to. Everybody knows the different airports in the area.
But I have to agree that HOU doen't really help as a description.

The fare basis for tickets is usually based on metropolitan area. For fare calculation purposes, what the airline's computer needs to know is CHI. It doesn't care if it's ORD or MDW, so those are converted to CHI before ticketing. Having to store the same fare for every place that can be reached from more than one airport in/near a city would waste space, waste processing time, and create another opportunity for errors. Since your credit card bill shows the end result of fare calculation, the general city codes may show up there. (These codes are not "non-conventional" or "non-standard." They are as conventional as the codes for individual airports, are fully standardized, and refer to a precise list of specific airports - though FTers who don't know this, or aren't anal about it, may not always use them precisely.)

Regarding Safari 3: the widget works fine for me with the 3.0.2 beta. I don't know if it stopped working during the brief interval I had the 3.0.1 beta, but if it doesn't work for you and that's what you have, get the new version.

Back to the top with this useful script
Just got a new laptop and had to do some searching to find it

Here is new location
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~abuckley/

Look for scripts towards bottom of page