Airport Codes in Posts
 

Hello. It would be nice if a mouseover popup with decoded airport name could be automatically incorporated in posts. For example, someone talks about their PDX-MSP-CLT trip, if I didn't know what airports those were, I would move my mouseover the 3 letter code and a small popup says "Portland" or "Minneapolis." It would have to identify three letter words in CAPS to trigger the link generation. This would save the 15-30 seconds it would take to open your favorite airport code database and search it in a different window...

EDITTED
Solution for Macs:
If you use Mac OS X Tiger (10.4), you can use the Dashboard widget [ttjoseph] wrote to quickly look up 3-letter airport codes and 2-letter airline codes:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashb...portcodes.html

Solution for PC's (Firefox):
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~abuckley/ (under "Scripts")
You must have Greasemonkey installed first

I concurr!

firefox plugin?
 

this would be a great firefox extension....

if anybody could program it..

dp

It's already there - (removed - ineffective link - my mistake everyone! :) )
*****

One concern I would have about this suggestions is that some forums, where airport codes are used regularly (like the mileage run forum) would be overrun & harder to read with all those mouseovers. Personally, I'm not a fan of mouseovers & I think it's worth the extra 15-30 seconds to google the airport code & find out what it is instead of having all those mouseovers...

I would tend to agree with this, but don't forget that the side effect of expecting people to search (at least in the MR forum) is the recent trend of posters making snarky replies because someone didn't provide the city name instead of the airport code.

Mike

I couldn't get access to this forum, possibly because I don't have a post count high enough.

Is there any other way to get this Firefox extension?

My only thought is that when talking about a fairly obscure airport, particularly in the MR forum, is to list the actual airport. While we know LAX, LGA, ORD, MDW, SFO, LAS, IAD, etc. etc., others such as College Station, Texas and Dodge City, KS (which granted might not key for a lot of MRs) are not.

It's not just you - I've got a high enough count and I can't see it.

Oh, I thought it was in the Women's Travel Forum, b/c I can't get to it either. :o

Maybe it's TalkBoard access only?

If you use Mac OS X Tiger (10.4), you can use the Dashboard widget I wrote to quickly look up 3-letter airport codes and 2-letter airline codes:

http://ll.cx/files/Airport%20Codes.zip

Sorry about the link everyone - it was an invalid old link & this was pointed out to me this evening. My apologies...

I like the idea of a flyover/popup. Another possible way to do this would be to implement an "expert mode", where when enabled, you get the 3-letter code, and when disabled, it would automatically parse the code into the names (also useful for the myriad other acronyms, such as SWU, E+, etc...)

here'e a post that has just such a script-does it have every airport in it? no. Is it helpful, YES

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...t=greasemonkey

man, i wish someone would make one for IE7...

here is another
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~abuckley/airports.html

Thank you!

Thanks! It works exactly as I described in my original post! I like it!

Thanks - just did, it's great!

airport list
 

i have problems with the airport list.
when i click on install on firefox it doesnt install the airports

any hint how to do it?

dp

If you were using the item my post referred to, it's not for Firefox. It's a widget for Mac OS 10.4. Double-click the downolad to decompress it, then double-click the widget icon to start the installation. It will ask you if you want to install it or not. If you choose to keep it, it will switch to Dashboard and give you the same choice again. Click "keep" and drag it to any convenient place on your Dashboard screen.

(If you were referring to something else and quoted my post inadvertently, I can't help you.)

I do have a Mac with OSX 10.4.9 This widget was working fine for me until I downloaded Safari 3.0 beta. Now, superficially there seems to be no relation between Safari (Apple's web browser) and a Dashboard widget, but I hear that Safari changes many other things.

Is anybody aware of this problem, a solution, or indeed other entirely different solutions for quickly looking up airline/airport codes?

Could we add 2-letter airline codes into one of these, please?

It's broken for me too...until I figure out why, the only workaround I can suggest is to downgrade back to the previous version of Safari. Sorry about that.

Assuming you have OS X 10.4 and are not running the Safari beta, my widget already has 2-letter airline codes.

Thank you for your effort. I'll wait a little and then decide. An obvious but naive question is, can we channel it through firefox or camino? Probably not, but if it is just a little web page, maybe we can edit some file somewhere to use another browser.

[/QUOTE]Assuming you have OS X 10.4 and are not running the Safari beta, my widget already has 2-letter airline codes.[/QUOTE]

Indeed. However, it would be nice to do the reverse look up, ie, find the codes for La Crosse, WI or Jet Airways.

Wild shot in the dark... OP probably expects everyone to know what UCSF stands for?

University of California, San Francisco?

Dashboard will only use WebKit (Safari's engine), so this can't be done and still have it be a widget.

I agree. I think I may as well just rewrite the thing from the ground up to do this (when I can find some time). It's not like it was a monumental effort anyway.

That's the thing... if I don't know an airport code, I just type in "XXX airport" in the Google search box of my Firefox window, hit enter, see results, then hit backspace to come back to the thread.

Total time < 5 seconds.

Or even faster (but less accurate)... double click the airport code, then drag to the search box. Total time < 3 seconds.

This is why I :rolleyes: when people complain about using codes. Did we stop teaching self-sufficiency in school?

Ah, but IF
 

the OP was under the impression that *only* conventional, 3-letter codes (e.g., ORD, IAD, LGA, etc.) were used s/he would be unfortunately inexperienced of the brutal realities.
One sees "CHI" as in "Chicago" but for either ORD or Midway , "WAS" for Reagan or Dulles, etc. and NYC for EWR, LGA, JFK and from what I hear, as far afield as BWI.
Egad!
Oh, the horror, since some serious confusion can result.
Worse, my credit card statement has an odd mix ---LAX CHI YTO--of conventional and non- codes. All the more curiously because NO-one conected with any tix I charge uses those #$%^ codes, not aircarrier reservations staff, not airport staff, and certainly not well-seasoned FT-ers.
Sooooo, WHERE do they come from?
(But I don't really want to know.:mad:)

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

To clarify:
 

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. :rolleyes:

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.

Sufficiently
 

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?