greg99

While you may be living in an ICAO world, most of the rest of us live in IATAland and only occasionally inhabit ICAO world (as we're not typically flight planning or piloting aircraft to Japan, etc.).

Do you mind throwing folks around here a bone and reverting to IATA designators? There are enough abbreviations tossed around here without using ones that trip up superexperienced flyers?

Plus, even your explanation doesn't ring true.

For instance, the claim that it's easier to mentally place the code when you don't know the actual airport doesn't make any sense when you're talking about Narita (which is both the city and the airport). Really, you get confused by NRT, but you remember RJAA?

Also, IATA/FAA LID (I guess you had to toss in an extra "TLA" for "location identifier"?) collisions? I totally get that this is a bad thing when filing a flight plan. On FlyerTalk? Not so much.

Nobody here was going to be confused when presented with "CUN" into thinking you were referring to an NDB (nondirectional beacon - a navigation radio station) in Fairbanks, Alaska. The IATA codes for the other three ICAO codes you cited didn't overlap with any FAA LID's.

There's a very fine line between being sophisticated and showing off.

Greg

mduell

So far off topic, but, my last reply.

When I look up the answer to someones question I'm not particularly inclined to translate between coding systems, particularly to one that I think is inferior (as explained below). I have no problem with people translating them in subsequent comments, but I think the criticism is unwarranted.

The ICAO airport coding system (unlike the meh ICAO airline coding system) provides automatic contextualization through region codes, and some contextualization for country codes (harder to remember and often indirect). NRT doesn't sound like any major city most people know of, but R provides automatic contextualization to east asia and J to Japan. I don't actually know what airport RJOO is, but I know it's in East Asia/Japan, which provides more information than ITM (I looked it up). GMP tells you nothing unless you're a korean history buff (the county hasn't even existed for a century?), but RKSS tells you it's in East Asia/Korea. Similarly I don't know most of the airports starting with F, but I know they're in southern Africa. I don't know all the countries in the Caribbean, but when I see T I know it's a Caribbean airport.

While there's no problem with ambiguity for HND or PVG here on FT, IATA still has the lack of contextualization mentioned above, and it results in misuse here. Which of MAN or MHT is in the US/UK? EGCC and KMHT are less ambiguous because you can easily sort out the region. Which of MEL and MLB is in the US/AU? YMML and KMLB are less ambiguous again. Whats the airport code for Dubai? DUB comes up a fair bit; EIDB and OMDB are a lot less ambiguous which is in northern Europe and which is in the middle east. We see MAN and MLB and DUB and AUK (NZAA or PAUK) misused all the time here on FT.

Although I prefer ICAO I'm flexible between the coding systems for airports, airlines, and aircraft types and I don't think it's unreasonable to use either system here. I do use IATA codes for schedule information since the whole concept of a schedule is so airline-centric they're published in IATA.

hookthem

No way! Do you know how long it already takes to get from one side of B to the other? Even walking on the moving walkways, I would say it is 15-20 minutes, assuming you're going all the way to the end of the RJ area (I forget the gate numbers... but it is where they put all the small jets).

trust77

The trains are pretty consistent and I've never waited longer than a minute or so for the trains to shuttle me between gates. UA should use Terminal A; Terminal A and Terminal C look under utilized. Of course, I never really used Terminal A until UA started NRT-DEN service, but it just seems so quiet all the time in Terminal A vs. Terminal B.

greg99

My last reply, as well.

It may also be entirely rational to abolish time zones and for all of us to use a single UTC (GMT) time zone (see, e.g., go.theinformation.com/b774c2).

But in most non military/space/aviation/naval contexts, we don't.

Greg

kale73

Seriously? If you're not particularly inclined to respond to a question in terms that the questioner is most likely to comprehend (in the FT context, that means IATA codes), then why even bother?

hookthem

Agreed. I tend to take greg's side on this one. Folks here (including myself) only know IATA.

However, we're bickering over codes here. I think we need to move on

TLDR; Some domestic UA flights out of DEN depart from A. Expect confusion from both crew and passengers.

sincx

If you guys don't remember both the ICAO and IATA codes for popular airports, you haven't been on FlyerTalk (or been flying) long enough!

WineCountryUA

Topic Check

Having a hard time to see the relevance of ICAO vs IATA codes to the expansion of UA into A gates at Denver. If someone can make that linkage fine but otherwise it seem OT and perhaps belongs in another forum.

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator

HeadInTheClouds

I actually remember that it was Ted flights out of the A gates, but it's certainly possible that towards the end they used them for other flights. But for a period of time, they had it set up so that Ted flights only used A gates.

Baze

Ha, I've been flying for 50 years and very frequently for the last 19 years and been on FT since 1999 and I don't know any of the ICAO codes and only the popular IATA codes. And I have a private pilots license. Never used the ICAO codes on flight plans. (Sorry MODS, felt I had to "correct" the erroneous post)

I remember UA used the A gates at Denver 10-15 years ago for more than just TED. Confused the heck out of me when they started it wondering why they put A in front of the gate number. Had to really hustle once I talked to an agent and they confirmed they were using A gates.

Aspen

When originally built, the first gate in the B Terminal was B15 to allow expansion without re-numbering all the gates. (However please do not extend beyond B95 because that takes an eternity to walk to, having once walked from B93 to B16 for a connection)

DenverBrian

Correct, and there are short term (by 2020) plans to expand to gates B1-15 when the airport decides it's time.

http://www.flydenver.com/sites/defau...esentation.pdf

...and don't forget, there's room for 6 more runways and Concourses D and E!

DENviaLAX

The rumor I've heard is that United will in fact be expanding B concourse in the near future. Adding onto the the west end of the concourse, similar to what WN just did on C. The original plan was to take over Delta's gates on C when they move, but they didn't want to have flights on all three concourses.

They will also be pushing UAX ops further down, taking over gates down to B60 eventually. Currently they're already using down to 55 on the north and 52 on the south for mainline ops, during peak times. There is some substantial growth happening at DEN for UA right now. I forget the exact numbers, but the number of mainline flights has increased, and will continue to increase, quite a bit.

Noanker1

Flight to Kona leaving from A41 tommorow AM, how long to get there from the United Club and is one of the clubs better or closer?