At One Place

What airport is BOS?

BOS is
Boston Logan International Airport
Boston, United States

Why the code is BOS

The first three letters of Boston.

The airport authority or a contemporaneous record states this directly.

The airport

IATA code
BOS
ICAO code
KBOS
Airport
Boston Logan International Airport
City
Boston, United States
Opened
1923
Code origin
Documented

Logan is three miles from downtown Boston, close enough that a water taxi is a normal way to reach it. The airport is named for Edward Lawrence Logan, a Spanish-American War general who never flew and had no connection to aviation at all; the legislature named it for him a year after his death.

The other code, KBOS

Every airport has two codes. The three-letter IATA code, BOS, is the one on your boarding pass and your luggage tag, and it is assigned for commercial use. The four-letter ICAO code, KBOS, is the one pilots and controllers use, and it is assigned geographically: the first letter or two identify the region, so every airport in the same part of the world shares a prefix. That is why KBOS looks nothing like BOS.

Common questions

What airport is BOS?
Boston Logan International Airport, in Boston, United States.
Why is Boston's airport called BOS?
The first three letters of Boston.
What is the difference between BOS and KBOS?
BOS is the IATA code, used commercially — tickets, timetables, luggage tags. KBOS is the ICAO code, used operationally by pilots and air traffic control, and assigned geographically by region.

Related pages

Sources

  1. OurAirports — OurAirports (Public domain)

How these figures are compiled and checked