AWOS on Internet

And Britain didn't get G. British airports start with "EG" (not quite
the same thing) and there is no correspondence between IATA
codes (e.g. LHR) and ICAO codes (EGLL). In fact whoever
coded the UK airports seems to have been on the booze. My
favourite... everybody knows that Gatwick is London's second
airport, I guess. So EGGW is... that's right, Luton, until recently
an obscure cargo/charter airport to the north of London (and now
Easyjet's main hub). Gatwick is of course EGKK... obvious,
innit.

The "E" prefix seems to be for north-western Europe, while "L"
is south-eastern... Germany is ED, while France is LF.

I guess things must get slow at ICAO Global HQ.

John

"Kevin Darling" wrote in message
om...
(Skyking) wrote in message
. com...
I believe that the "K" is only supposed to be used for International
Airports. I wonder how the good old USA got a "K" when Canada got a "C"
and Great Britain got a "G"? When we stay within our boundries, we
don't
need a letter to tell us that we are navigating within our own country.

The USA (and most countries) got an ICAO airport letter to match that
country's main ITU radio callsign prefix. Since Kxx is allocated for
USA radios, our airports got the "K".

Kevin

"Skyking" wrote in message om...


I believe that the "K" is only supposed to be used for International
Airports.

Not exactly correct. The K prefix is the way US airports are expressed
in the ICAO format. Not all US airports qualify, mut it's not just those that
are international. In order to make things "METAR" compliant, the FAA
went around and reidented everybody who reported surface observations
to the ICAO-compliant format.

I wonder how the good old USA got a "K" when Canada got a "C"
and Great Britain got a "G"?

In international radio the US gets K, W, N, and AA-AL. The A and N
date back to the Army and Navy original uses. I'm not sure how we got
K and W. The British and the former parts of the British Empire split
the G's and V's (except Canada gets C's as well).