What is an ICAO airport code?

An ICAO code is a unique 4-letter identifier the International Civil Aviation Organization assigns to airports and aerodromes. They are used in flight plans, air traffic control, and aviation databases. EGLL, for example, is London Heathrow.

How is an ICAO code different from an IATA code?

IATA codes are 3 letters and are used for passenger-facing things like tickets and baggage tags. ICAO codes are 4 letters and are used operationally by pilots and controllers. London Heathrow is LHR in IATA and EGLL in ICAO.

What does the first letter of an ICAO code mean?

The first letter (or first two) encodes a world region. K covers the contiguous United States, E northern Europe, L southern Europe, R East Asia, and Y Australia. This lets controllers infer a rough location from the code alone.

Does this tool cover every airport in the world?

No. It uses a curated offline set of major international airports so it works instantly with no network call. Smaller or regional airfields may not appear. For an exhaustive list consult the official ICAO Doc 7910 location indicators.

Is my search sent anywhere?

No. The lookup runs entirely in your browser against a built-in table. Nothing you type is transmitted to any server.

ICAO Airport Code Lookup

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The International Civil Aviation Organization assigns every airport a unique four-letter ICAO identifier. Unlike the familiar three-letter IATA codes printed on boarding passes, ICAO codes are what pilots and air traffic controllers use in flight plans and clearances. This tool searches a curated set of major airports by ICAO code, IATA code, name, or city.

How it works

Each ICAO code follows a regional scheme. The first letter, and sometimes the first two, identify a broad area of the world: K for the contiguous United States, E for northern Europe, L for southern Europe and the Mediterranean, R for East Asia, Y for Australia, and so on. The remaining letters narrow it down to the specific airport. For example EGLL breaks down as E (northern Europe), G (United Kingdom), and LL (Heathrow).

The tool matches your query against the ICAO code, the IATA code, the airport name, the city, and the country, so you can search whichever you happen to know.

Tips and example

If you only know the passenger code, type the IATA letters — searching LHR returns Heathrow with its ICAO code EGLL. To browse a country, type its name, such as Germany, to see the major airports it contains. Because the data set is curated for speed, very small airfields are not included; for an exhaustive list, consult ICAO Doc 7910, the official register of location indicators.