12

I am collecting a list of all airports in the world for my project, at present I have 46000 airports in my database but only 7000 airports have IATA code. So my question is, if I only take 7000 airports with IATA code and delete the rest will I lose any major airports or airports with huge traffic.

Are there any airports that have no IATA code but do have a huge passenger traffic or provide connections to major airports?

Danny Beckett
  • 16,627
  • 28
  • 98
  • 176
Nivin Abraham
  • 163
  • 2
  • 7
  • 1
    If you are collecting all the airports in the world, why do you want to eliminate a large chunk? – Burhan Khalid Sep 23 '14 at 10:52
  • I only want the airports with passenger traffic. The database is for creating a flight booking site. So there is no use in having airports which passengers never use (i,e) Why i planned to delete all the airports which doesn't have an IATA code. Before deleting i wanted to confirm are there any airports which has no IATA code but provdes a major connection or serves a huge passenger traffic. – Nivin Abraham Sep 24 '14 at 05:44
  • 1
    You mean commercial traffic. Passenger traffic is at many airports that don't have IATA codes. – Burhan Khalid Sep 24 '14 at 06:09
  • Can you name a few airports Burhan.It will be very helpful for me. – Nivin Abraham Sep 24 '14 at 06:12
  • 1
    @BurhanKhalid I assumed he meant scheduled passenger airline traffic, which is a subset of commercial traffic. Lots of commercial traffic is non-passenger and operates out of fields without IATA codes (e.g. cargo, crop dusters, aerial photography, air ambulances, etc.) – reirab May 16 '16 at 22:28
  • Technically, Groom Lake has a pretty substantial (but almost certainly classified) amount of scheduled commercial passenger traffic, but no IATA code. It's a popular destination for JANET airline, which may also be the only airline whose flight attendants are required to acquire and maintain a U.S. DoD Top Secret clearance. :) I don't think they have any interlining agreements, though, so you probably don't need to worry about them in your booking system. – reirab May 16 '16 at 22:31

1 Answers1

8

According to this thread, pretty much anything with scheduled air service will have an IATA code to facilitate booking.

From looking at the FAA data, it looks like everything with more than 10,000 enplanements (enplanement=1 passenger boards an aircraft) is considered a "primary" airport, and they all have an IATA code unless the airport is strictly general aviation and unscheduled service.

For these reasons, you probably won't find anything with "huge" passenger traffic but no IATA code. There may be airports with unscheduled service to major hubs, though.

Christian Mann
  • 101
  • 2
fooot
  • 72,860
  • 23
  • 237
  • 426