Airports and Waypoints

When you take a big trip or do a big project, it can be overwhelming when you think about it all at once. When pilots fly a long flight, they break it up in steps, or waypoints. They fly from waypoint to waypoint until they reach the final waypoint, their destination.

Each waypoint has a set of letters as its identifier. For example, our flight plan from Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands consisted of this list of waypoints:

AYPY (Papua New Guinea Port Moresby Airport)
DOMARA
GNY (GURNEY)
GUVOG
REDOX
NIPOK (AGGG)
IDSEK
HN
AGGH (Honiara Airport, Solomon Islands)

Each time we reached a waypoint, we’d radio our location to the air traffic controller to let them knew where we were.

You can relate this to the student as follows: When you visit your friend at his/her house are at a party, or are at a lesson or practice, you might have to check in at a special time and call your mom or dad to let them know you are OK. When you do this, you’re doing exactly what a pilot does during flight!

Each airport has an identifier as well.

The airports in the Dallas area include:

Love Field: KDAL
Addison Airport: KADS
DFW Airport: KDFW

When you book a flight online, you’ll need to know a 3-digit code in order to let them know what airport you want to go to. This 3-digit code is the same as the waypoints above if you take off the leading K.

Internet exercise:

Visit one of the commercial airlines’ Web sites:

http://www.aa.com

Practice looking up airport codes. (without booking any flights!)

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