What airport is EWR?

Why the code is EWR

The letters of nEWaRk. The obvious code, NEW, was unavailable because N was reserved.

The airport authority or a contemporaneous record states this directly.

The airport

IATA code

EWR

ICAO code

KEWR

Airport

Newark Liberty International Airport

City

Newark, United States

Opened

1928

Code origin

Documented

The US Navy holds every radio call sign beginning with N, which is why no American airport code starts with one and why Newark could not be NEW. EWR takes the E, W and R from the name instead. Newark was the first major airport serving New York City and for a while the busiest in the world, until LaGuardia opened in 1939 and took the traffic.

The other code, KEWR

Every airport has two codes. The three-letter IATA code, EWR, is the one on your boarding pass and your luggage tag, and it is assigned for commercial use. The four-letter ICAO code, KEWR, 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 KEWR looks nothing like EWR.