Simviation Forums

I've been reading post with certain short abbreviations in them. Naturally these are destinations but how do you know which destination uses a particular letter? Does FS2004 list them? As a beginner it's pretty over-whelming at first s I read these post with these destination and don't get head or tail what airports are being talked about.

In FS, Create a Flight, click on 'change' under 'Selected Location'. You can enter Airport Name or ID, or City to view the listing for any airport in FS.

Or a couple of links to do the same online:
http://www.airnav.com  USA
http://worldaerodata.com/  World

Cheers,
Dave

An Airport can have several abbreviations, it all depends on who you ask

My home base airport's ICAO (that's the International Civil Aviation Organization ) code is ESGG

Every airport in Sweden has ES as the first 2 letters, and I believe every major airport in the US starts with a K (KORD for O'Hare, KLAX for Los Angeles etc). As a pilot you will use the ICAO codes.

But there is also the IATA (International Air Transport Association) code, and for my airport the code is GOT...but the IATA code is used by the bagage handlers, (amongst others). As the IATA codes are integrated into the computers that handles automated baggage sortation systems (you know the neat tag your suitcase gets when you travel)

I used to work as a ramp rat for 2 summers in a row

But to sum it up: use 4 letter abbreviations in FS

I feel very perpelexed even reading your post

EHAM is the airport of Amsterdam; Schiphol.
KJFK is obviously John F Kennedy Intl. in New York.
EHAM- KSFO is again Amsterdam, but this time the destination is San Francisco

Just open up Flightsim and you will see what people mean. Click on Create Flight and then Selected Location type EHAM into the Airport ID and you will see the airport highlighted, in this case Schiphol Amsterdam Nederlands  EH lets you know the country EH is always for Holland  EG is always UK  the second two letters are the actual airport.
Therefore EGLL is Heathrow EGCC is Manchester EGBB is Birmingham.
The route you selected was Schiphol to  Kennedy Int
and Shiphol to San Francisco.

As has been said if you dont know the code then type in the airport name or city name and if it has an airport it will list it and give you the ICAO code.

Occasionaly if it is only selecting from one country you may have to click on Clear Filter so that it selects from the whole world.

Thanks Reap, as long as FS2004 makes it easy for me than I'm okay. I thought I had to take a darn 3 year course in learning all those letters. Whew will still learn as I go along.
Nexus, thanks, I will look study those to night  :D

Heres a link to a site that will take all the confusion away from the IATA codes http://www.airlinecodes.co.uk/
As far as the ICAO codes are concerned, in the 1960's when ICAO was first formed in Montreal, Canada refused to join, so the original idea of having the 4 letter code all starting with the distinctive letters meaning something recognisable got scotched. E would be Europe, C would be Canada etc, but how the heck the USA became K I dunno. Then the 2nd letter as in EG being Great Britain and EH for Holland and so on. What happened in the case of Canada was that the ICAO and the IATA got amalgamated so that the IATA code for Vancouver YVR got added to the ICAO code for Canada C. All over the world, Vancouver is CYVR but in Canada it's still just YVR. I think the bitching began when the International language for Air Travel was changed from French to English. The C for Canada is really C for chip on the Francophone shoulder.

I'm still confused but I'll have a look at the link you posted. Thanks.

I'm still confused but I'll have a look at the link you posted. Thanks.

Despair not - there is reason to the madness.  For flightsimming purposes - use the "create a flight" and flight planner for route information.

lol, our Airport management professor had us memorizing ICAO codes for the whole semester...

daily quizzes in his class had up to 25 airport codes and we had to figure out which airport/city they identified...

Lot's of fun! :-)

You'll get that in airline training too.  LOL

Heres a link to a site that will take all the confusion away from the IATA codes

Nice one logjam....appreciate that one..commoner