It's almost always about what's shortest:

• If it's pronounceable and one syllable, I pronounce it: ORD is ord, RAK is rak, MEL is mel. Except as with most anyone who grew up in Southern California, LAX is L-A-X and EZE is Eazy-E.
• I might invent a pronunciation of the code: wise (YYZ), ackle (AKL), silk (SLC).
• Some letters roll off the tongue: RDU, DME, PVG.
• Short city or airport names include Hong Kong, Heathrow, Reagan.
• B@astardizations of any of the above also go, e.g. bank (BKK), casey (MCI), milexpa (MXP)

My backwards brain at work again ... to myself, it's usually a city name, but not necessarily the city of the airport.
ARN is usually 'Stockholm', rather than Arlanda.
BWI is 'Baltimore'.
IAD used to be 'Dulles' to me, but after confusing my Mom, I call it 'Centreville'.
DCA is 'DC'. Not National, not Reagan, 'DC'.
EWR is 'Newark not New York'. Yup, the whole thing.

I sometimes am not clear when I speak (as if anyone here had not already noticed that :rolleyes: ) so because of that, when speaking to friends and family, I've taken to the three-letter codes and speaking each letter when helping them do routings. I'll still speak the closest city name as we start the conversation, but it's three-letter codes once the city decision has been made.
I still confuse my Mom a little, but bless her, she tries to keep up with my insanity.

When talking about BDL, I say Bradley. When mentioning it, some people don't understand that even though Hartford is on the ticket, the airport is not actually in Hartford.

I always wondered why with all the "San" cities, San Francisco, San Antonio, etc, we got the "SAN". My 2 home airports in my life got easy codes, SAN and BUF. :)

Yes, I do. When reading, I think of the associated city rather than the code, or the airport name if there is more than one airport in that particular city (Kennedy/LaGuardia, Orly/DeGaulle, City/Gatwick/Heathrow/Stansted, etc.). And when speaking, I never use the airport codes, except sometimes JFK, though I usually say "Kennedy".

Unless it's a code I've never seen before - then it becomes "Ess-Zed-Ex - where the heck is that?" (SZX = Shenzhen, China just in case anyone's wondering)

Am I the only one that calls ORD as "Orchard"?

JP

LAX is "L-A-X," but JAX is "Jacks"

BWI -- Bee We
CLE -- Clee
CAK -- Cack
MKE -- M - K - E
ORD -- O - R - D
MDW -- Midway

No, I do that too.

DCA I usually call "National" and if someone insists upon calling it "Reagan" I will call it the "Ronnieport"

Related problem, also indicating too much time on FT... changing planes at CVG, tried to scan the monitor quickly while walking past, to find my connecting gate to ORD... however, I couldn't find anything listed under "ORD"... finally realized I had to look under "Chicago".

:)

For some reason, to me when I see DTW, I will mentally pronounce it as either Det-wahh (the french pronounciation of Detroit), or Metro. No reason why which one comes up at whichever time.

MCO will forever be pronounced in my head as "O-I-A" due to the local media's insistence on referring to it as OIA in any story they ever do that mentions the airport. (It's not even "Orlando International", it's always OIA)

We have the same thing in Denver. To the locals, it's DIA.

Maybe I spend too much time with my fellow degenerates on OMNI but the first airport that came to mind when I saw this thread was CUN.

Which I think of as "coon."

As another poster said, anything pronounceable as a word on its own is so pronounced (BAG, PEK, SYD, MEL), except for LAX and BOS, which will always be "Logan" to me. I refer to a few others by other names: BKK is simply Bangkok, CDG is Charles de Gaule (don't ask me why, I have no idea), LHR is Heathrow, and NRT is Narita.

When I fly from my home in Wenatchee to Fresno, I always chant EAT FAT, EAT FAT. :D

Interestingly, I'm with you completely given your examples, except for IAH,
which is pronounced "Hell on Earth."

Speaking of which: when my ride dropped me off at DCA yesterday, I wondered
if it should be renamed "Eugene V. Debs."