The Burbank Bob Hope Airport is served by Amtrak (and Metrolink) and shares the code BUR...almost makes sense in this case!
LAX
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silmaril
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Before the 1930s, existing airports used a two-letter abbreviation based on the weather stations at the airports. At that time, "LA" served as the designation for Los Angeles Airport. But with the rapid growth in the aviation industry the designations expanded to three letters c. 1947, and "LA" became "LAX." The letter "X" has no specific meaning in this identifier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_International_Airport
I believe there's a few others around the world that had an X added in the same way.
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Before the three letter codes were standardized for airports, the National Weather Service two letter location codes were used for the airport at the location. That is where LA for Los Angeles, PD for Portland and PH for Phoenix came from. When the 3 letter codes came about these were simply converted to LAX, PDX and PHX.
Many railway stations have IATA registered codes. In the US typically these are different from the Amtrak codes, though there are exceptions like EWR and BWI where the two codes are the same. The LAX code for Los Angeles Union Station is an Amtrak code and not an IATA code. Example of a station with an IATA code that is different from the Amtrak code can be found mostly around the NEC. For example New York Penn Station has the Amtrak code NYP and the IATA code ZBP. Philadelphia 30th St has Amtrak code PHL IATA code ZFV. Newark Penn Station has Amtrak code NWK IATA code ZRP. etc.
A railway station needs to have an IATA code only if there is a desire to currently, or in the future issue tickets to such a station using the airline interline ticketing system.
Incidentally Burbank Bob Hope does not seem to have any IATA code as far as I can tell. The code BUR is just the Amtrak code. Neither does Chicago Union Station or Milwaukee, suggesting there fore the current non-preparedness to issue airline codeshare tickets on Amtrak through Milwaukee Airport to either of those two stations.
Tennessee Traveler
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No Amtrak service to Nashville but our airport designation is to out of towners a little strange in that it is BNA which actually stand for Berry National Airport. Even thought Nashville built and opened a new Nashville International Airport in the 1980's the designation BNA remains.
BCL
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It's BUR. You can check for it under location code.
http://www.iata.org/publications/Pages/code-search.aspx
For the OP, I wasn't necessarily picking on you. However, I've really never heard of anyone referring to most Amtrak stations in major cities by their station code, like one would an airport. It would cause too much confusion with airports. Acronyms seem to be more specific, like LAUS, CUS, or WUS. NYP seems to be a big exception, but it's obviously an acronym based on a station name.
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Yes. BUR is the Airport Code. There is no indication that it is the Amtrak Station Code in the IATA location code lookup. As a matter of fact it does not return any of the Amtrak Station IATA codes as valid either. So I don't trust it as far as train station codes too much. It does not return anything valid for any of the European train stations either. I surmise that it just returns the Airport Codes, and not any other IATA registered location codes.
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LAUS is easy to navigate and I have never found any issues with people there. We ate breakfast we bought inside, outside in the garden area with many other travelers. The Met Lounge is on the second floor up an elevator labeled for the lounge and opens just outside the lounge. There are several Redcaps with carts that meet the trains and who take passengers who request them from the Lounge to their sleeping car and take their bags to their room. I enjoy walking through the station, looking at the old ticket area, thinking of what it must have been like during the height of train travel. We dropped our bags at the lounge then went walking, even though we had only a couple hours. Did make sure we were back at the lounge 45 minutes before so were ready to be pre-boarded. I have not had the SWC arrive more than 30 minutes late since they have a time buffer built into the arrival time.
Maglev
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Since the topic of abbreviations has been mentioned, just wanted to point out that it's LAUPT, not LAUS.
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Meaning Los Angels union passenger terminal.
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It used to be LAUPT. Its new owner officially changed it to LAUS. So yeah. It *is* LAUS now.
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Precisely correct, although I still think of it as LAUPT. Name change makes sense, most of its life it was a truly a terminal, meaning trains originated and terminated there and did not go through. Before Amtrak started Santa Barbara (now San Luis Obispo, too) - San Diego service the only train for which LAUPT was an intermediate station was the pre-1942 Sunset Limited (San Francisco-New Orleans).
KmH
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Thanks for the education. I was wondering about why the station would be called LAX on the Amtrak site, in light of the airport's existence. Seemed a little confusing to me. They do the same thing with Portland Union Station. PDX.
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Regardless of when and how the codes originally came into being 99.9999...% of passengers today would consider LAX to be exclusive to the airport. It's literally one of the most recognizable location codes in the US and among routine travelers worldwide. Ideally Amtrak would move away from codes that could cause potential confusion but they have so many other problems that it's hard to see them worrying about this anytime soon.
For whatever reason, when Arrow came into being and the three character station codes with it, Amtrak tended to adopt the IATA codes for cities that didn't have multiple airports or multiple train stations (which is probably why Chicago is CHI, not ORD or MDW, or New York was NYP and NYG, not JFK or LGA).
Maybe the reason was Arrow was a customized version of Sabre, the airline reservation system, and the codeset was already there :0
Personally, I like what VIA Rail Canada did. They use 4 character codes that are distinctly their own, VCVR for Vancouver, TRTO for Toronto. You can't mix those up. Although parenthetically, Amtrak never did use the IATA codes for Canadian cities. Maybe they didn't like the "Y". And I have never heard of Toronto Union Station being commonly referred to as "TRTO".
Also, back in the mid-70s when they did this, using the IATA codes as the actual place names for the airports was much less common than it is now. Even LAX, probably the bellwether for the practice, was more commonly known as LA International back then (I know, I was there). The codes were really just codes on the tickets and the baggage tags then (except for JFK, which was always known as JFK, but that probably started was because its namesake was known as JFK, not because it was the airport's IATA code), so it wasn't a big deal then as it is now.
With all that said, I am probably one of the most adamant people that Los Angeles Union Station is NOT LAX. It is LA Union Station, LAUS, LAUPT but NEVER "LAX". I guarantee you that not a single person in Southern California thinks of that pretty building on Alameda at the 101 as "LAX", it is "Union Station". "LAX" is reserved for the ugly, curdled mess 15 miles or so to the southwest.
Maybe the reason was Arrow was a customized version of Sabre, the airline reservation system, and the codeset was already there :0
Personally, I like what VIA Rail Canada did. They use 4 character codes that are distinctly their own, VCVR for Vancouver, TRTO for Toronto. You can't mix those up. Although parenthetically, Amtrak never did use the IATA codes for Canadian cities. Maybe they didn't like the "Y". And I have never heard of Toronto Union Station being commonly referred to as "TRTO".
Also, back in the mid-70s when they did this, using the IATA codes as the actual place names for the airports was much less common than it is now. Even LAX, probably the bellwether for the practice, was more commonly known as LA International back then (I know, I was there). The codes were really just codes on the tickets and the baggage tags then (except for JFK, which was always known as JFK, but that probably started was because its namesake was known as JFK, not because it was the airport's IATA code), so it wasn't a big deal then as it is now.
With all that said, I am probably one of the most adamant people that Los Angeles Union Station is NOT LAX. It is LA Union Station, LAUS, LAUPT but NEVER "LAX". I guarantee you that not a single person in Southern California thinks of that pretty building on Alameda at the 101 as "LAX", it is "Union Station". "LAX" is reserved for the ugly, curdled mess 15 miles or so to the southwest.
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jis
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New York had the additional problem of having two rail station viz NYP and NYG.
Amtrak seems to like to refer to Toronto as TWO or something like that AFAIR.
Back in the days JFK was not even JFK. It was Idlewild. Most airports are not referred to by their IATA code by anyone other than the air-geeks. Orlando International is known colloquially as OIA, not MCO. I have not heard any man on the street in Newark call Newark Airport EWR. If you tell a taxi driver in New Orleans that you want to go to MSY he'll probably look at you strangely.
That I agree with wholeheartedly.
"Back in the days JFK was not even JFK. It was Idlewild. Most airports are not referred to by their IATA code by anyone other than the air-geeks. Orlando International is known colloquially as OIA, not MCO. I have not heard any man on the street in Newark call Newark Airport EWR. If you tell a taxi driver in New Orleans that you want to go to MSY he'll probably look at you strangely. "
Yes, but by the 70s, it was JFK (renamed 1964?). I know that practice is far from universal and many, many airports, aren't commonly called by the IATA abbreviations, as you point out. But a lot are these days, PDX, SFO, DIA, DFW, ORD (to an extent) just off the top of my head, are often called by their abbreviation. My real point was that doing that at all is a fairly recent development, back in the 70s when Arrow was set up, it wasn't very common, they were just codesets.
Of course, in the vast majority of cities which have only one commercial airport, it is almost always known as..."The Airport".
"Yes, but by the 70s, it was JFK (renamed 1964?). I know that practice is far from universal and many, many airports, aren't commonly called by the IATA abbreviations, as you point out. But a lot are these days, PDX, SFO, DIA, DFW, ORD (to an extent) just off the top of my head, are often called by their abbreviation. My real point was that doing that at all is a fairly recent development, back in the 70s when Arrow was set up, it wasn't very common, they were just codesets.
Of course, in the vast majority of cities which have only one commercial airport, it is almost always known as..."The Airport".
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Devil's Advocate
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Travel agents have almost completely disappeared and DIY bookings make up something like 99% of all tickets sold in the US. As a result nearby major airport codes have become common knowledge among average everyday people. If you asked a working age local resident to take you to "MSY" you'd probably be asked if you meant the airport. On the other hand if you asked a local resident from generation X/Y/M to take you to "Idlewild" you'd probably get nothing but weird looks and shoulder shrugs because nobody other than air geeks would have any clue what the heck you were talking about.
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TiBike
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When the name changed from Idlewild to JFK, it was a big deal that the three letter code changed too -- that was an exception granted because of the universally known circumstances. In most - all? - other cases where an airport has been renamed, the three letter code remained the same.
Orange County or John Wayne or whatever they call it now is still SNA, because it was Santa Ana airport back in the day. And its been a long time since anyone flew out of Sacramento Municipal Field or Fresno Air Terminal, but the acronyms live on.
Orange County or John Wayne or whatever they call it now is still SNA, because it was Santa Ana airport back in the day. And its been a long time since anyone flew out of Sacramento Municipal Field or Fresno Air Terminal, but the acronyms live on.
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That would be mainly because there is nothing called Idlewild anymore.
When Austin's Airport was Robert Mueller Municipal from 1930-1999, (now an Upscale "Urban Village" similar to the old Stapelton in Denver) the Code was AUS, same as today's Amtrak Station.
Once the Airport was moved to the old Bergstrom Air Force Base and became Austin Bergstrom International, the code remained AUS. (even though there were No International Flights! )
When one enters faux bookings on web sites the code that seems to work for most is ABI????
Once the Airport was moved to the old Bergstrom Air Force Base and became Austin Bergstrom International, the code remained AUS. (even though there were No International Flights! )
When one enters faux bookings on web sites the code that seems to work for most is ABI????
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Devil's Advocate
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There are multiple international flights out of Bergstrom today. I'm guessing there was a delay between the domestic soft opening and the formal customs and immigration opening? I don't fly in/out of Austin much (SAT has similar routes/frequencies) but when I have I always used AUS without issue.
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jis
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Denver retained the code DEN when a flash cut over was done from Stapleton to Denver International. Of course locally DIA is used more often than DEN, somewhat like in Orlando OIA is used more often than MCO. The other "Orlando Airport" is simply called Sanford or sometimes Orlando-Sanford.
And for some odd convoluted reason Melbourne Airport is sometimes referred to as Orlando-Melbourne, even though it is 65 miles away from Orlando.Devil's Advocate
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Is Sanford that weird warehouse looking airport with no windows facing the aircraft? I'm not exactly a fan of MCO but IIRC it still looks worlds better than SFB.
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MCO is the only major airport in the Orlando area. It is slated for more than doubling of capacity with the progressive construction of the South Terminal over the next decade or so. Sanford is used by very few airlines, and AFAICT, none of the majors in a big way. It is also MCO that is slated to get all the multi-modal connectivity over the next decade too.
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