Airline tickets

[jec6613]

You mean like this? http://www.disboards.com/threads/a-list-of-common-abbreviations.1660743/

Except transportation specific. Especially with some percentage of threads in this board being non-Disney related...

 

[sam_gordon]

When talking airlines, SW, to me, is Air Namibia, while LUV or WN are Southwest Airlines, and JB is a contractor I work with. I use the IATA codes for shorthand, particularly for WN and B6, because they're more globally unique.

Except you use the IATA codes in your job. They're familiar to you. I'm willing to wager if you asked 100 people on the street what airline is represented by WN (or B6), you might get 2 who know. Ask them what airline they think about if they hear SW or JB and I bet it's 90+. Are they "incorrect"? Sure. But it gets the message across to the majority.

Besides, everybody here already uses at least one IATA abbreviation that's incongruous: Orlando International Airport isn't OI or OIA, it's MCO; and some people use ORD and YYZ as well.

But people are exposed to the airport code. It's on their email confirmations/itineraries. It's on their boarding passes. It's on the luggage tags. Exposure is the difference.

 

[goofy4tink]

Seriously???? If you ask the vast majority of people here what WN stands for, they aren't going to have a clue. Is SW the 'correct' abbreviation for Southwest? No, but it is what is commonly used here. I doubt that many people are flying Air Namibia....could be wrong though. We have had little to no issue with this. And we still see instances where OIA is used....just not that common. So, we can safely still use the abbreviations we're using...they've worked for a very long time, we all (at least most of us) know what they mean.
Of course, Virgin does muck it up a bit!!! Perhaps we need to start saying V-At, V-Am, V-Au.

 

[jec6613]

Except you use the IATA codes in your job. They're familiar to you. I'm willing to wager if you asked 100 people on the street what airline is represented by WN (or B6), you might get 2 who know. Ask them what airline they think about if they hear SW or JB and I bet it's 90+. Are they "incorrect"? Sure. But it gets the message across to the majority.

But people are exposed to the airport code. It's on their email confirmations/itineraries. It's on their boarding passes. It's on the luggage tags. Exposure is the difference.

I don't use IATA codes in my job, I use them when I travel by air, which is 99% for leisure. The arrival/departure screens for JetBlue list the airline's IATA code of B6, and it's on their tickets, their boarding passes, their luggage tags, et cetera. Anything that gets scanned by a computer or could be interlined is required to have it, which is exactly the same amount of things as the IATA airport code is used on; the only difference to the average passenger is that the airport code can be used when you type it into a website to book. People understand AA, UA, DL, and AS on their tickets.

And when I type B6 to my friends who have less than 15,000 total lifetime flight miles, they know it's JetBlue and not from me, but because they had to know it to find their flight on the departure boards.