Did you know IATA was based out of Canada? You would at least think we would give our own airports sensible designations. What’s with the Y?Based on my expertise (having worked 1.25 coop terms at Nav Canada), I will enlighten you. First of all, we now use ICAO, not IATA, which are not actually three letter designations. They’re four letters long. And in Canada, they all start technically with “C” and the rest of the three letters generally start with Y (because of the previous standard, IATA), although not all. Check out all the codes.
I understand the difference between ICAO and IATA, but my question is why were all of Canada’s major airports (YYZ, YVR, etc) assigned IATA codes (which were before ICAO and now incorporated into Canada’s ICAO codes) that are non-descriptive like YYZ for Toronto Pearson International Airport (Wouldn’t TPA be better, for example). Most other airports like JFK, LAX, SEA, NRT, etc. all sound like the airport’s actual names like JFK Airport (NY), Los Angeles, SeaTac, Narita, respectively.
