Airport Identifiers

[amillet]

par posted in "Today's flight for 2017" that he flew to W29 (Bay Bridge, Stevensville, MD). My home airport is W28 in Sequim, WA.  Got me wondering how the FAA assigns airport identifiers.  Anybody have any insight?

[carusoam]

Good question!

 

Most airports in NJ got an N in them

of the three character symbols that are not the kind that start with K...

The N can appear in the first, last or middle position...  probably helps with the more simple confusion type issues.

52 different states, 26 letters to choose from...

Best regards,

-a-

[Hank]

I live near both 06A and 41A here in Lower Alabama. My folks live near 24A  and 33A in the western NC mountains . . .

[RLCarter]

Heard that all 3 character airport identifiers will be getting changed to K??? To get aligned with ICOA...

[NotarPilot]

Just now, RLCarter said:

Heard that all 3 character airport identifiers will be getting changed to K??? To get aligned with ICOA...

Interesting, where'd you hear that?

[RLCarter]

3 minutes ago, NotarPilot said:

Interesting, where'd you hear that?

Airport manager brought it up at an airport board meeting, I have a meeting with him on Tuesday, will ask if he has documents from the FAA I could see

[Hank]

9 minutes ago, RLCarter said:

Heard that all 3 character airport identifiers will be getting changed to K??? To get aligned with ICOA...

K22 in eastern KY changed to KSJS three years ago. Never knew why . . . Not long after, I moved back South.

[NotarPilot]

Just now, RLCarter said:

Airport manager brought it up at an airport board meeting, I have a meeting with him on Tuesday, will ask if he has documents from the FAA I could see

I was just curious if you read it through AOPA, AIN or some other aviation publication. 

[RLCarter]

29 minutes ago, NotarPilot said:

I was just curious if you read it through AOPA, AIN or some other aviation publication. 

Nope just going by what he said, T65 has been getting the runway widened and lengthen along with some other improvements that weren't needed, he told the board that the FAA would be re-certifying the approaches, runway will go from 13/31 to 14/32 and the identifier would be changed to the ICOA 4 letter 

[Raptor05121]

It will probably just be getting a K-prefix. I know my home base, 24J, is annotated as K24J on ICAO weather charts.

[Wildhorsesracing]

Many of the airports in NC had 4 digits - 4NC3 became KBQ1 - it's the favorite stop in NC for barBQ

[jdrake]

I vaguely recall an instructor once telling me it had something to do with which air traffic control center the airport near.  This "rule" didn't apply to fields with strictly alphabetical identifiers.

It seems to hold water in many cases (Eastern NY and PA, NJ fields often feature a N for New York; Maryland, Delaware, NC have a W for Washington; New England have B's for Boston) but there are also a lot of exceptions in those same areas.  Perhaps airport owners may be able to exercise their preferences for identifiers and if they're not interested they revert to the "rule"

Surely can't explain the Bay Bridge vs Washington state example.

 

[milotron]

In Canada we have all 4 letter indicators, presumably in compliance with ICAO.  They all start with C, for Canada. The second character is Y when there is a local weather station/forecasting on site.  Or so I have been told...  Larger facilities are all alphabetical characters; the smaller ones tend to have numbers too.