International Civil Aviation Organization Airport Code - History

History

The International Civil Aviation Organization was formed in 1947 under the auspices of the United Nations, and it established Flight Information Regions (FIRs) for controlling air traffic and making airport identification simple and clear.

Code selections in North America were based on existing radio station identifiers. For example, radio stations in Canada were already starting with "C", so it seemed logical to begin Canadian airport identifiers with Cxxx. The United States had many pre-existing airports with established mnemonic codes. Their ICAO codes were formed simply by prepending a K to the existing codes, as half the radio station identifiers in the US began with K. Most ICAO codes outside the US and Canada have a stronger geographical structure.

Most of the rest of the world could be classified in a more planned top-down manner, as they didn't have as much established aviation legacy. Thus Uxxx referred to the Soviet Union with the second letter denoting the specific region within it, and so forth. Europe had too many locations for only one starting letter, so it was split into Exxx for northern Europe and Lxxx for southern Europe. The second letter drilled down: EGxx was the United Kingdom (G for Great Britain), EDxx was both West Germany and East Germany (D for Deutschland), LExx was Spain (E for España), LAxx was Albania, and so on. France was designated LFxx, as the counterpart EFxx was the unambiguously northern Finland.