Y does Canada have so many Y airport codes?
 

I am not sure if this is the right place for the question but I will ask it anyway.

Way did Canada get all the Y codes? YYZ,YUL.....

Most other aiports have a good that means something.

Cheers

I believe in the coding scheme Y means Canada.

I think that the second and third letters were the two-letter code used by Canadian Pacific to refer to its railway stations. When three-letter coding came in for air transport, it was easy to grab an otherwise little-used letter to prefix to them to produce a new three-letter code.

Just like the US system is really four letters (LAX is actually KLAX and BWI is actually KBWI), so is Canada's. The first letter is always C and most of the first airports got Y as their second letter. Victoria is CYYJ, Vancouver is CYVR and Toronoto is CYYZ... but God's River, Manitoba is CZGI and Melville, Saskatchewan is CXEK.

Not a good explanation for the Y code, but still interesting:

http://www.skygod.com/asstd/abc.html

By coincidence I did some notes on this last month in Omni.

http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttr...ML/010786.html

Here is the "scientific" explanation...:

There are two separate sets of airport codes - the familiar three-letter codes used for passenger handling, and the four-letter ICAO codes used for flight operations.

The four-letter codes consist of a two-letter country code - such as EG for the UK, EH for the Netherlands or LF for France - followed by a two-letter airport code.

LHR is EGLL, LGW is EGKK, STN is EGSS, AMS is EHAM, CDG is LFPG.

As you can see from these examples, four-letter codes don't necessarily bear any resemblance to the equivalent three-letter codes... at least not in Europe. The USA have the entire K block (i.e., from KA to KZ), which means that as a general rule your three-letter codes are the same as your four-letter ones, minus the initial K.

The main two-letter code for Canada is CY (CZ is also in use, and CW is used for aviation weather stations), and Canada has adopted the same system as the USA, i.e., three-letter codes are the same as four-letter codes minus the initial C. Which is why Canadian three-letter airport codes generally start in Y!



[This message has been edited by Aviatrix (edited 05-23-2003).]

Interesting article about why N, W, and K can't be used as the first letter in an airport code (helps explain ORF and AZO/Kalamazoo).

But I wonder why Y, which as most of this thread explains, is used to start Canadian codes, wasn't excluded for U.S. airports.

Example: YIP/Detroit Willow Run (Ypsilanti)