Plane landing in airport

Anyone familiar with Miley Cyrus’ Party In The USA will know that the code for Los Angeles is LAX. But that’s not the only one – Portland is PDX, for instance, and our own Birmingham is BHX.

Not all airport codes, of course, end in the letter. But that doesn’t mean the “X” ending is random.

Nope – in fact, you’ll find that most of the airports with the iconic ending were so named in the ’30s and ’40s.

Why do so many airport codes end in X?

Hadleigh Diamond, a provider at SCS Chauffeur, explained the “X” is “a leftover from the 1930s and 1940s, when the aviation industry expanded airport codes from two to three letters to improve communication across telex and radio systems”.

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