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    One Typo, Wrong Continent

    CGP Grey

    2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2025

    YouTube

    16:04 · 12M views · Dec 2, 2022

    CGP Grey explains why airport codes are inconsistent and sometimes confusing, from their origins in old weather station codes to the quirks that cause mistakes. He builds the story around a single typo that sent a flight to the wrong continent.

    HN people point to it as a fun summary of how messy airport codes are, especially in threads on aviation falsehoods and code collisions.

    Engineering, Transport & MakingAviation & aerospace engineeringLanguage & linguistics
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    3 comments from Hacker News

    1. @Titan2189Jun 2025· in “Falsehoods programmers believe about aviation”

      Great Summary of how messed up Airport Codes are by CGP Grey this video including (attempts at) a few in-depth reasons for why these quirks exists

      RecommendsView on HN
    2. @simplyinfinityDec 2022· in “Airport Runway Names Shift with Magnetic Field”

      CGP Grey did a couple of episodes on runways[0] and airport codes[1] that are just fascinating and worth the watch [0] [LINK] [1] this video

      RecommendsView on HN
    3. @shagieNov 2024· in “Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code”

      CGP Grey The Maddening Mess of Airport Codes! this video I'd rather deal with designing tables to properly represent names.

      CitesView on HN