What airport is SNA?

Why the code is SNA

Santa Ana, the city it sits in, despite the airport being named for John Wayne.

The airport authority or a contemporaneous record states this directly.

The airport

IATA code

SNA

ICAO code

KSNA

Airport

John Wayne Airport

City

Santa Ana, United States

Code origin

Documented

It has one of the steepest departure profiles in commercial aviation: aircraft climb hard off the runway and then throttle back sharply over Newport Beach to satisfy a noise ordinance, producing a sensation of the engines failing that alarms first-time passengers. The procedure is entirely normal and entirely deliberate.

The other code, KSNA

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