What do the prefix letters mean?

[machineman9]

I've seen airports with their name as 'S18' or 'O69' or something like that and I am wondering what that letter before the number means, and well, what the number also means. How is it generated and upon what rules is it called that?

Also, I know that for things such as aircraft registrations and probably airports as well they have a letter at the start to sort of designate the country. I believe 'G' is for England, but what is the proper name for all this and where can I find a full list of what all the letters mean?


Cheers

[beaky]

Airports:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... rport_code



Aircraft:


http://daveg4otu.tripod.com/pref.html

[machineman9]

Ah. So is the 'O69' an FAA one and others also have an IACO one too?

[The Ruptured Duck]

Why do some airport identifers in the USA not start with "K"?  Example:  3AU is Augusta Kansas.  It can't be by size because Augusta is 5,000ft long and the airport I spent much of my childhood at, Audubon County Airport (KADU) is 3,600.  It also cannot be because of operations because Augusta is much busier than Audubon.

[machineman9]

Well the K appears to be with IACO, which is international. So is the K just for international airports? Taking guesses here  :D

[cardinalbrian]

The "K" is an IACO addendum to the old fashioned US of A naming system.  Apparently there's a problem with numbers in IACOland so any US airport designator containing numbers never got a "K" prefix.  You find this when you attempt to enter those airports into a standard GPS data base..  On a practical level it's true that any US airport with nubers in it does not kave a "K" prefix (unles, of course, one startes with a k!  But I'm not sure of the real reason.

OK, correct me...