There are only 17576 combinations that can be considered when allocating a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for airport codes. Part of the challenge is that the code should also be meaningful and identifiable, for instance, everyone knows that London Heathrow is LHR and that Berlin in Germany is BER.
If you don't believe me take a look at this site http://www.world-airport-codes.com/.
After a while some of the codes appear confusing. Hwanga in Zimbabwe has the seemingly obvious code of WKI. I assume this is pronounced Wiki.
This may be of interest to some of the IT geeks reading this, assuming of course that the introduction of Google’s Knol has/will obliterated the Wiki concept. I can never work out why open source stuff like this "Wiki" is so damn difficult to maintain. I guarantee that Google or Microsoft will make this easy for Joe Bloggs general public to use. I can personally hear the death knell for Wiki already, largely IMHO its own fault for keeping it geeky and for the myriad of different syntax styles that are available.
Anyhow, back to airports. With over 9000 airports registered in the database to-date and our insatiable appetite to travel around the world, it is likely that more and more airports are going to be built, each requiring yet another unique meaningful code.
Presently, these codes do not include numeric characters so the basic math tells me that there are 26x26x26=17576 combinations available. This is stated with the assumption that unlike car license plates, we do use every letter available in the alphabet.
So what is going to happen come the day when we have used up all these codes. We could begin to use numeric characters, however, the numbers 0,1,2,3,5 and 7 are unavailable due to their similarities with the O, I ,Z,M (sideways), S and L. Also, unless we have taken a big step into the future, a code like KN9 really sounds like a it should remain in a novel by Arthur C Clarke rather than a domestic airport in deepest Taiwan.
That said, there is more than one way to skin this cat.
We could be tempted to extend the size of the code from say 3 characters to 4, or perhaps more. However, this will require a huge amount of effort to synchronise all the airline ticketing systems around the world, not to mention:-
If you don't believe me take a look at this site http://www.world-airport-codes.com/.
After a while some of the codes appear confusing. Hwanga in Zimbabwe has the seemingly obvious code of WKI. I assume this is pronounced Wiki.
This may be of interest to some of the IT geeks reading this, assuming of course that the introduction of Google’s Knol has/will obliterated the Wiki concept. I can never work out why open source stuff like this "Wiki" is so damn difficult to maintain. I guarantee that Google or Microsoft will make this easy for Joe Bloggs general public to use. I can personally hear the death knell for Wiki already, largely IMHO its own fault for keeping it geeky and for the myriad of different syntax styles that are available.
Anyhow, back to airports. With over 9000 airports registered in the database to-date and our insatiable appetite to travel around the world, it is likely that more and more airports are going to be built, each requiring yet another unique meaningful code.
Presently, these codes do not include numeric characters so the basic math tells me that there are 26x26x26=17576 combinations available. This is stated with the assumption that unlike car license plates, we do use every letter available in the alphabet.
So what is going to happen come the day when we have used up all these codes. We could begin to use numeric characters, however, the numbers 0,1,2,3,5 and 7 are unavailable due to their similarities with the O, I ,Z,M (sideways), S and L. Also, unless we have taken a big step into the future, a code like KN9 really sounds like a it should remain in a novel by Arthur C Clarke rather than a domestic airport in deepest Taiwan.
That said, there is more than one way to skin this cat.
We could be tempted to extend the size of the code from say 3 characters to 4, or perhaps more. However, this will require a huge amount of effort to synchronise all the airline ticketing systems around the world, not to mention:-
- Online and published guides.
- Signage (i.e. Welcome to LAX).
- All those travel agents whom for years had remembered these codes.
- All those flight anoraks who have travelled to every airport known to humankind.
- The humble fan website and all those pub quiz questions that have been written and are now negated.
All this hassel because someone decided to save a byte or two when naming the airports in order to save, at the time, valuable disk space. The irony being that this is the same disk space that the likes of Google and Yahoo are giving you gigabytes of just to sign up for an online email account.
It doesn't stop there though, what about the issued tickets that are already in the public domain. The transition period for change over would be huge (up to a year). So now we have to include all those check-in staff and the baggage handlers who now have to remember two codes for every airport into the debate.
I would suggest that the majority of those 9,000 airports have been created in the last 50 years. I find it quite daunting that we might experience the aviation equivalent of the millennium bug. This may not be that far off and once the developing nations reach full steam ahead with their expontential economic growth, you may well find yourself employed in the future to sort out the code written by those legacy developers.
Those same developers who didn't have the foresight to cater for tomorrow’s usage.
When we think about it, this has happened before. It was 20 years or so ago when it was concluded that 640kb of RAM was more than enough for any computing requirements in the home PC.
And those guys from the 70's that designed these airline systems have a lot to answer for. Not only did they earn good money back then with job security (outsourcing wasn't invented or trendy then). They now get rewarded for coming back in and fixing up their issues many years later.
So get travelling now. There might be some downtime in this industry and remember, someone has to pay for all this development. I pray to god (actually I don't as I am athiest) that you are using a 4GL like 2e or Plex to maintain this code. If you are using a 3GL you might have quite a lot of impact analysis to perform first.
Remember, you need to be extra cautious with your design and field domain management and regardless of what people tell you they want, look into the future and get it right first time.
Watch this space. You heard it here first.
It doesn't stop there though, what about the issued tickets that are already in the public domain. The transition period for change over would be huge (up to a year). So now we have to include all those check-in staff and the baggage handlers who now have to remember two codes for every airport into the debate.
I would suggest that the majority of those 9,000 airports have been created in the last 50 years. I find it quite daunting that we might experience the aviation equivalent of the millennium bug. This may not be that far off and once the developing nations reach full steam ahead with their expontential economic growth, you may well find yourself employed in the future to sort out the code written by those legacy developers.
Those same developers who didn't have the foresight to cater for tomorrow’s usage.
When we think about it, this has happened before. It was 20 years or so ago when it was concluded that 640kb of RAM was more than enough for any computing requirements in the home PC.
And those guys from the 70's that designed these airline systems have a lot to answer for. Not only did they earn good money back then with job security (outsourcing wasn't invented or trendy then). They now get rewarded for coming back in and fixing up their issues many years later.
So get travelling now. There might be some downtime in this industry and remember, someone has to pay for all this development. I pray to god (actually I don't as I am athiest) that you are using a 4GL like 2e or Plex to maintain this code. If you are using a 3GL you might have quite a lot of impact analysis to perform first.
Remember, you need to be extra cautious with your design and field domain management and regardless of what people tell you they want, look into the future and get it right first time.
Watch this space. You heard it here first.
Thanks for reading.
Lee.
Lee.
