The 'Y' Of It

Some rights reserved by Eddie Codel

If you travel much you are probably able to come up with the airport codes for at least a few airports. If you ever fly to or within Canada you might be familiar with the idea that Canadian airport codes begin with the letter 'Y'. 

When I was in elementary school my mom became a travel agent and then she taught classes at the local community college. One of her classes focused on learning city codes. I thought learning airport codes was fun. Eventually I grew up, worked in the travel industry, traveled a fair amount myself, and now live overseas - still traveling.

My husband attended a conference in Abu Dhabi this past week. When he was on his journey home I went to Google and typed in the airport codes to use their flight tracker feature. As I was typing in our airport code here I realized that we start with a 'Y', but are no where near Canada. This started me thinking, "Are there any other cities in the world whose airport codes start with 'Y', but they are not in Canada?" and "If so, how could this be?"

Are you now wondering too? After some research here are the best of the answers I found...

Why? This is a lengthy explanation, but I found it fascinating. It even gives the answer to why my small college town's airport code has NOTHING to do with the name of the city.

All airport codes starting with 'Y'