A closer look
Airport identifier codes assigned by the International Air Transport Association often make no logical sense to casual travelers because the three-letter system ran out of obvious combinations decades ago, forcing places like Northwest Arkansas National to use the bewildering abbreviation XNA. Originally, airports just used the two-letter codes from local weather stations, but when air travel boomed in the 1930s, they lazily slapped an X onto the end of existing codes, which is exactly how Los Angeles ended up with the iconic LAX moniker. The entire global baggage routing infrastructure is fundamentally built on top of a makeshift, duct-taped naming convention from nearly a century ago, ensuring your missing suitcase is lost on a deeply historic level
