The Airport City Codes Database is arranged three ways:

• Alphabetically by Country

Click on the first letter of the country name for which you want all the airport codes. You will see here a list of all the countries in the world with beginning with that letter. Click on the name of the country in which you're interested and you will see here a list of all the airports in that country. Note that the U.S. is not here as its broken by State below.

• Alphabetically by U.S. State

The U.S. is further divided into States. Click on the first letter of the U.S.State for which you want all the airport codes. If there's only one state with that letter you'll see the codes, however if there is more than one state with that letter e.g. "T" for Texas and Tennessee, y'all see here a list of all the States beginning with that letter. Click on the U.S. State in which you're interested and y'all see a list of all the airports in that State.

• Alphabetically by City Name (Note Two Versions)

Click on the letter (to the left) that corresponds to the initial of the city or town for which you need the three letter code, and you will see here a list of all cities or towns in the world that begin with that letter together with the airport code, country, country code, GMT offset, runway length, elevation, latitude and longitude. Note the two boxes, one contains all the data mentioned here (the last box) and the other just contains the code lookup. The Full Data takes some time to download (10s-2mins depending on the letter), where the code lookup only is fast (less than 10 seconds).

• Alphabetically by Airport Code

Click on the first letter (to the left) of the three letter airport code you know and you will see here a list of all codes in the world beginning with that letter. Scroll through the list until you find the code you're searching for.

Definitions of terms used in Database:

• Airport Code

The airport code is a three letter designator for a commercial airport, or other travel point -- e.g. a large bus station. These are the codes that airlines and pilots use to identify airports and are used in timetables, baggage tags, tickets, advertisements, Airline and Global Reservation Systems. There are approximately 9,000 of them in use of a total of 17,576 available. IATA in Geneva is responsible for the designation of these codes. How many aiports are there by country? here's a link to a chart that shows you.

• Country Abbreviation

Each country has an intuitive two-letter alpha code that is used in data bases around the world not only by airlines, but by shipping companies, phone companies and any company that has a global reach.

• Country Number

Each country also has a number in all those databases which follow a pattern of:
000-099: USA -- in this data base the number corresponds to a state
100-199: Central America
200-299: Caribbean
300-399: South America
400-499: Europe
500-599: Africa
600-699: Middle East
700-799: Asia, Russian Federation and Indian Sub Continent
800-899: Australasia
900-999: Canada
I don't know who devised these and why they are different from telephone country codes, but they are.

• GMT Offset

This is how many hours this city is away from the Grenwich Meridian in jolly old London, England without accounting for adjustments for daylight savings time. So for example, a GMT offset of -3 means that at 3pm in London, it is 6:00pm in that city, and a +6 means that it would be 9:00am in that city. GMT means Greenwich Mean Time, or Greenwich Meridian Time.

• Runway Length and Elevation

This data is a little old and may not have the latest distance of the runway in ft, or be updated for a new runway. So if you're a pilot planning to land a plane here, please don't blame me if the runway has been shortened. I also only have the data for about 8,000 of the 9,000 airports. The distances (in feet) are important for pilots because bigger planes need longer runways to take off and land. The elevation (in feet also) is important to know because the air gets thinner the higher you are and thus it requires more speed (or less weight) to get the lift under the wings to take off, and more speed generally requires a greater runway length. Airlines have to study carefully each aircraft/route/runway combination to make sure that it's aircraft can successfully take off from an airport and fly the intended route with varying loads of passengers and cargo. In some extreme cases like La Paz in Bolivia aircraft have to be modified because at 13,000 ft, the altitude is so high that if you were to open the door of normal jet-plane on arrival, all the oxygen masks would deploy as the sensors would think that the plane had depressurized.

• Latitude and Longitude

Most people know that the world is divided up into a set of numerical references that describe your position somewhere on the face of this planet. Most people however who have a GPS device have absolutely no idea how to use these coordinates. Hopefully, if you have a GPS device and take a reading where you are (near a big city), it should match the data in this data base. If not, either you are terribly lost, your GPS has malfunctioned, or my data is wrong. Furthermore you have seen the lines drawn on maps of the world that circle the globe horizontally and vertically -- these are the major lines of latitude and longitude. Because this planet is nearly spherical, the lines are divided up into measurements called degrees, minutes and seconds which are similar to angles of a circle but in three dimensions. These numbers help pilots and captains navigate, and nowadays car companies use them to offer in-car products to people who don't know how to read a map. I use them to calculate an approximate flight time and distance between two points on the globe and hopefully will soon include this feature on this web-site.

If there's a city or an airport missing, or an incorrect code, please let me know. You may find a few errors and a few new airports not yet added. So sticklers for perfection will have to bear with me.

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