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I am searching some airports databases and I find some airports with the same IATA code with different ICAO codes. Is it mistake in the database? Is it OK?

For example:

  1. Beaufort MCAS - Merritt Field (ICAO KNBC IATA BFT)
  2. Beaufort County Airport (ICAO KARW IATA BFT)

Edit: Another example;

  1. Paamiut Airport (ICAO BGPT IATA JFR )

  2. Paamiut Heliport (ICAO BGFH IATA JFR )

Another example with 40 km between them:

  1. Desierto de Atacama (IATA: CPO – ICAO: SCAT)
  2. Chamonate (IATA: CPO – ICAO: SCHA)
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    $\begingroup$ Definitely some confusion is going on somewhere. Note that Wikipedia sources its "BFT" for the MCAS to a database entry which is headed "Beaufort-County Airport", but shows Google Maps coordinates for the MCAS. Also, does the IATA usually assign any codes to military airbases with no civilian traffic? $\endgroup$
    – hmakholm left over Monica
    Mar 24, 2014 at 17:39
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    $\begingroup$ IATA itself only lists BFT as the city code for Beaufort and as the airport code for County. $\endgroup$
    – Řídící
    Mar 24, 2014 at 18:00
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    $\begingroup$ In your Paamiut example, the Wikipedia page you link states that the airport "replac[ed] the old heliport": presumably the code was re-used. Wikipedia was incorrect about Chamonate: IATA's search page knows nothing about it. $\endgroup$
    – David Richerby
    Mar 25, 2014 at 19:04
  • $\begingroup$ BTW, the same things reproduces with the openflight database too, at least with Beaufort. Pretty hard problem to solve, I guess I'll use ICAO+IATA for unique keys. $\endgroup$
    – Mikle
    Oct 19, 2014 at 15:50

1 Answer 1

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You're right that two airports can share the same 3-letter code, but they're not necessarily IATA codes (they could actually be FAA identifiers, or just locally assigned codes).

In implementing Otto the Autopilot in our chat room, for commands like !!weather JFK, I needed to find a way to reliably convert IATA codes to ICAO codes. I ended up using the same source as you linked to, and imported the columns we needed into MySQL. A quick query shows 65 (i.e. >=130) duplicates:

AHT AJL API APS ARS AUS BJW CGY CLG CPO CSZ DDU DZN GIG HKG HYD IOR ISG IZA JFR JRS KFE KMM
KWB KYF LIM LUZ MCJ MCU MJF MNI MPD MPT MRE MUC NST NWT OBI OHE PCO PDG PHG PIV PPJ PRI PRM
PSV RCH REQ RZS SEA SFK STI SYC SZR TFY THO TNO TPJ UCN ULG VME VQS WRW YDT

The problem is, that IATA wants you to pay several thousand dollars for access to their list. So OurAirports attempts to collect all the known IATA codes, but it is user-editable, like Wikipedia. So there are inaccuracies in their database; and as I mentioned, there is some overlap between IATA/FAA/local.

The actual IATA codes are unique (although sometimes reused).

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    $\begingroup$ There are also IATA codes for groups of airports that serve the same city, e.g LON for LHR, LGW and STN, or BER for SXF and TXL. $\endgroup$
    – Simon Richter
    May 17, 2016 at 23:12

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