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You think airport codes are bad, try airline codes. The IATA standard is still only two (2) letters, leading to insanity like recycling codes after one airline
by rippercushions 4y ago
You think airport codes are bad, try airline codes. The IATA standard is still only two (2) letters, leading to insanity like recycling codes after one airline dies, meaning the meaning of the code is time-dependent, and, even worse, "controlled duplicates" where two airlines are intentionally assigned the same code at the same time, since they fly in different parts of the world and pinky-promise to never overlap.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/35907/do-two-airlines-have-iata-code-n8 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/35907/do-two-ai...
Three-character ICAO airline codes are much better and used almost exclusively in actual flight ops, but for passengers it's still two-character codes all the way.
- cyphar 4y agoFunnily enough, CGP Grey also made a video about that[1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/jfOUVYQnuhw https://youtu.be/jfOUVYQnuhw
- macintux 4y agoThat’s the same video as the post, unless I’m missing something.
- javawizard 4y agoYou're not. GP, did you mean to link to a different video?
- spoils19 4y agoI think they meant to link to this one: https://youtu.be/jfOUVYQnuhw https://youtu.be/jfOUVYQnuhw
- judge2020 4y ago..which is the same video as the thread. Airline codes are a different beast.
- culi 4y agoThis is a hilarious bit of exposition of how few people actually read/watch the links posted here. Anyways, both IATA and ICAO (as well as FAA) are explained in the video. Y'all should watch it! It took months of original history just to get an answer to why Canadian airports start with a Y
- teaearlgraycold 4y agoYou're trolling, right?
- skrebbel 4y agoI thought it was remarkably well-executed
- cyphar 4y agoAh, my bad. I thought the post was a link to the other CGP Grey video about airports[1] because the video about airport codes does talk about airline codes (and GP implied it doesn't). I really shouldn't comment late at night... [1]: https://youtu.be/qD6bPNZRRbQ https://youtu.be/qD6bPNZRRbQ
- krick 4y agoOr better try telephone region codes, which are ambiguous when a phone number is written as a consecutive string of digits, without +/()/-/space.
- skrebbel 4y agoYou say this as if it’s a universal thing, like IATA codes, but I assume it’s a quirk of some particular country? My region code definitely does not have this. Sounds pretty nuts to me btw, how does that work when you turn it into standard E.164 format like “+123456789”?
- Symbiote 4y agoBritain has different length area codes. 020 is London, 0121 is Birmingham, 01234 is Bedford, 015396 is Sedburgh, population 2700. The local part of the number is 8, 7, 6 or 5 digits accordingly. I never found this to be a problem. If you're dialing locally from a land line, you usually know the local code. For national or international dialing it doesn't matter. Occasionally people put the space in the wrong place, like 0207 77777777 for a London number.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y agoThis feature of a numbering system is referred to as “open-plan numbering“. In a place with “closed-plan” numbering, all telephone numbers have the same length and format.
- agurk 4y ago> Occasionally people put the space in the wrong place, like 0207 77777777 for a London number To expand on this, the codes have changed a lot over time. London used to have separate codes for inner and outer London, which at their last iteration were 0171 and 0181. These were replaced in 2000 with (020)7 and (020)8 respectively. At this point it still made sense, if inaccurately, to group the first four numbers. There was also some perceived prestige with having an inner London number. In 2005 (020)3 was included due to a shortage of numbers and (020)4 for the same reason in 2019. With the portability of numbers and the extra ranges it no longer makes sense to group the first four - and the number of people who want to infer location from a landline number is probably much lower these days anyway.
- europeanguy 4y ago> leading to insanity like recycling codes after one airline dies, meaning the meaning of the code is time-dependent Why is this insanity? Almost everything in real life is time dependent. I think this is just insanity to devs who want to fit the world to their data model rather than the other way around which is how it should be.
- ratg13 4y agoReusing the same unique identifier another user or business had almost always causes problems. If special access was given to one entity, often that special access remains after the new entity takes over. Often times the new entity gets access to private data of the old entity. It makes record keeping difficult to know who was what entity at any given time. If you haven’t seen the problems caused by doing this, consider yourself lucky for working for institutions that aren’t so careless.
- taeric 4y agoIf you are from the US, I have bad news for you about SSNs. :D
- marcosdumay 4y agoThe goal of those codes is to improve the communication, mostly between the airplane and air traffic controllers. The one large issue with the IATA aircompany codes is that there aren't enough to every one in activity, even if you extend them with not allowed tokens (like numbers). Those codes were never meant to identify any entity in an atemporal matter.