Is it just me?

[clogged]

Probably is. Sigh.

A large number of local expats call anything Amsterdam-y, AMS. As in the airport code.

Talking about Amsterdam Central Station (TRAIN, NO WHERE NEAR AN AIRPORT)? Call it AMS. Red Light District? Red Light in AMS. Going on a canal cruise? Cruising in AMS. Where do your friends live? AMS.

Anne Frank house AMS. The museum at AMS (which does confuse me because there is a museum actually at the airport). Shopping in AMS. Traffic heavy on the AMS ring road.

You get the idea. So..... is it normal to call a city by its airport code? Or can I start yelling at people?

[ninjatofu]

I vote go ahead and start yelling at people. Also, when talking to them about ANYWHERE, refer to it only by airport codes. The more obscure the better. And then when they ask you why you are talking like that respond "oh, I'm sorry! I thought we were all fucking travel agents! My bad!"

[clogged]

I love you.

[ktkl09]

Haha I am dying at the response of "I thought we were all fucking travel agents!".

[anna7602]

I've only seen this written out when friends who travel a lot update their FB status, ie "JFK-PDX today," "back in LGA," etc. Ok, actually, it's not even lots of friends, maybe 2 or 3 people I know. I've never, ever heard it used in spoken conversation.

[travelingturtle]

It doesn't bother me if the airport code, like it is for AMS, is a shortened form of the city as oppose to something else completely. For example, I wouldn't have an issue with using AMS, but I wouldn't call NYC JFK (unless I was at JFK). I would never refer to anything in Paris but Charles de Gaul (or however it's spelled) airport as CDG. Our closest airport is Dusseldorf (DUS) and I refer to the city as D'dorf when I don't feel like writing it out (or deal with the proper spelling with umlauts vs. without umlauts).

[clogged]

It used to be on facebook, but has crept into actual real conversation. And in either case it has nothing to do with airports, airplanes, or part of a travel process. Well, except trains. They will take train from X city to AMS and think I am the idiot when I thought they got off at the actual Schiphol station actually in the airport. Grrrrrr.

[crimsonandclover]

Oh, yeah, whenever I'm heading to Chicago I always say I'm going to Ord. "The Ord Bears are on TV this afternoon" etc







... joking. I've never heard that before. I only use airport codes when writing our travel itinerary in my planner

[blushing]

I use CPT for Cape Town when I am typing, but not in everyday conversation when talking. It is a very normal thing to shorten Cape Town to CPT so I don't see the issue, well, not really.

[aMrsin09]

What is the local "common" abbreviation for Amsterdam?

[dorothyinAus]

I generally only use Airport code when discussing travel plans, so I would have assumed they were flying out or headed to the airport as well.

But if you do what to start referring to all cities by their airport codes, here is a great link to help you www.world-airport-codes.com/

In cities with multiple airports, I would choose the smaller, more obscure ones. For example, Melbourne's main airport is Tullamarine with the MEL code, but the city is also serviced by Avalon Airport with the code AVV.

[wise_rita]

I do this all the time with Minneapolis, MSP.

For one, M-i-n-n-e-a-p-o-l-i-s is a long-ass word. Secondly, MSP is easily identifiable as Minneapolis (as opposed to if the airport code was, say, XML which is not easily identifiable).

I wouldn't say it out loud but written? All the time.

[clogged]

May 26, 2012 17:42:04 GMT -5 aMrsin09 said:

What is the local "common" abbreviation for Amsterdam?

The 'Dam or just Dam.

Well, since a few of you seem to call towns by their airport codes, guess I can't scream at anyone. I will resort to passive aggressive statements instead. Starting with calling my town LEY and their town "That which is without a nickname since you have no airport".

[elenetxu]

So when I fly into Madrid, I'm going MAD?

[clogged]

May 27, 2012 3:00:36 GMT -5 elenetxu said:

So when I fly into Madrid, I'm going MAD?

BWA HA HA HA HA HA

[NomadicMama]

I, too, have heard this done. My parents lived in Sarasota, FL, for a few years. The airport code is SRQ. There is a local city magazine that uses SRQ as its title.

But it is kind of annoying. I think sometimes it's person specific, too. Some people can pull it off, while others just sound dumb.

[GilliC]

I have been known to refer to Stavanger (in written text only) as SVG. But OSL is the airport. And if you say "OSL" it means the same thing as saying "Gardermoen."

Ironically enough: ...unless you're talking to the travel agency that handles our flights for work. They claim that "OSL just means Oslo. Gardermoen doesn't have its own airport code." *facepalm* They actually said this to me when I was complaining that I couldn't filter out flights to "Oslo-Torp" (2 hours away) or "Oslo-Rygge" (1 hour away). wise_rita, you should keep this in mind, so next time you're holding a boarding pass for a flight to OSL, you can ask the pilot to take you to Rygge.

[travelingturtle]

I'm confused by your OSL stuff. So there are two airports in Oslo that don't have airport codes?

[frlcb]

Lots of peoPle refer to stuff in Atlanta as the ATL

[GilliC]

No, the greater Oslo area has three airports:
OSL - Oslo Gardermoen airport
TRF - Torp regional airport. 2 hours away in Torp. Known to RyanAir passengers as "Oslo-Torp"
RYG - Rygge airport. 1 hour away in Rygge, near Moss. RyanAir calls it "Oslo-Rygge"

A lot of travel search engines translate "OSL" as "Oslo - All airports," kind of like searching for flights to "LON" ("London - All airports"). Unfortunately, this means there's no way to search only for Oslo Gardermoen (whereas in the London example you could search for LHR, LGW, etc).

When I complained to the travel agency that their search was translating OSL to "Oslo - All airports" without giving me a way to exclude Rygge and Torp, they told me that Oslo Gardermoen doesn't have its own airport code. Which is a load of crap. It does have its own code: OSL.

[bugabean]

I use CPH for Copenhagen, but I don't think of it as the airport code, even though it is. It's just shorter. CoPenHagen. (If I'm speaking Danish, I say KBH for KøBenHavn, which is not the airport code….) Lots of both expats and natives do it. I'm not really sure who or where I picked it up from. *shrug*

I did use MSP when I lived in the Twin Cities, if I was referring to the metro area. If I just meant Minneapolis (not St. Paul), I'd say Mpls.

And all this is only for written communication. I'd never in a billion years say that I live in see-pee-aytch. That would be weird.

[travelingturtle]

Thanks for that OSL explanation. I love it when people (in this case the TAs) try to give an explanation when they don't know the answer.

[wise_rita]

May 27, 2012 11:44:05 GMT -5 GilliC said:

wise_rita, you should keep this in mind, so next time you're holding a boarding pass for a flight to OSL, you can ask the pilot to take you to Rygge.

HOLLA! Saves me 50 minutes getting to the ILs then!

The biggest trauma of my life is because of that damn OSL vs. TRF airport code. When I first went to Norway to study abroad - alone, abroad for the first time - I just typed "Oslo" into the flight search, thinking nothing of it. I had directions on which bus to take and where to meet someone - for the wrong airport.

It took me several hours of sheer terror to get where I needed to go. I was exhausted, freezing and terrified. The most traumatic experience of my life, all because of that damn airport code!

ETA:

[potatopie]

My favorite is Ottawa (YOW). I can only say it as I'm a cartoon character and I've just slammed my finger in a drawer. YOW!!!!!

[elenetxu]

May 28, 2012 2:55:44 GMT -5 potatopie said:

My favorite is Ottawa (YOW). I can only say it as I'm a cartoon character and I've just slammed my finger in a drawer. YOW!!!!!

;D


Definitely better than BOS or BIO.