Guess the Airport: The Airport Code Game With Distance and Direction Clues

Find the mystery airport in five guesses

If you've ever read a boarding pass and known exactly where ORD, HND or LIS is, this one's for you. Guess the Airport picks a mystery airport at random. You guess any airport, and the game tells you how far away the answer is and which direction to head. You have five attempts to find it.

It's free, there's nothing to sign up for, and a round takes about a minute.

How to play

Pick a difficulty. Standard draws from 312 well-known airports. Expert draws from all 1,210 airports in the game.
Make a guess. Click the search box and type an airport name, city or three-letter code. Pick a result and click Submit.
Read the clue. A wrong guess shows the distance from your guess to the mystery airport in miles, and a compass direction (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W or NW) pointing toward it.
Close in. Use each clue to narrow the search. Find the airport within five guesses to win, then click Play Again for a new one.

Your guesses come from the same list as the mystery airports, so in Standard mode you can only guess the 312 Standard airports.

How the clues work

Distance is the great-circle distance between the two airports, the shortest path over the Earth's surface, rounded to the nearest mile.

Direction is based on the difference in latitude and longitude, the way you'd read it on a flat world map. It isn't the heading a plane would fly. That matters on long guesses: guess New York (JFK) when the answer is Tokyo Narita (NRT) and the clue says 6,730 miles, W, even though a real flight to Tokyo heads north over Canada and Alaska. The game also takes the short way around the date line, so a guess from Honolulu (HNL) toward Tokyo points W, not E.

A sample round

Here's how a game might go when the mystery airport is Lisbon (LIS):

Guess	Clue	What it tells you
New York (JFK)	3,358 mi, E	Across the Atlantic, in Europe or Africa
London Heathrow (LHR)	972 mi, SW	Iberia or North Africa
Madrid (MAD)	319 mi, W	Western Iberia: Portugal
Porto (OPO)	172 mi, S	South of Porto: Lisbon
Lisbon (LIS)	Correct	Solved in five

Strategy tip: Open with a big hub near the middle of a continent, then move in big jumps. Two guesses in different directions usually pin down the region, and the distance tells you how far to go.

What's in the game

Standard: 312 airports in 118 countries

Standard mode sticks to major airports most travelers have heard of. The United States has the most (38), followed by China (25), Spain (14), the UK (13), and Italy (10).

Expert: 1,210 airports in 189 countries and territories

Expert mode adds regional airports, island strips and seaplane bases. The United States leads with 273 airports, then Russia (72), Australia (59), Japan (51) and Brazil (44). Expect answers you've never heard of.

The edges of the map

Northernmost: Wiley Post-Will Rogers Memorial Airport (BRW) in Utqiagvik, Alaska, at about 71.3 degrees north.
Southernmost: Ushuaia (USH) in Argentina, at about 54.8 degrees south.
Farthest apart in Standard mode: Malaga (AGP) in Spain and Auckland (AKL) in New Zealand, 12,392 miles apart. That's close to half the Earth's circumference, so a guess of Malaga when the answer is Auckland is about as wrong as a guess can be.

Airport code facts worth knowing

Most codes are easy: LIS is Lisbon, SYD is Sydney. The tricky ones are what make this game fun.

Codes named after old airfields. Chicago O'Hare is ORD because it was once Orchard Field. Orlando is MCO from the former McCoy Air Force Base. New Orleans is MSY, from Moisant Stock Yards, the site named for aviator John Moisant.

The X at the end. Los Angeles (LAX), Portland (PDX) and Phoenix (PHX) all end in X. The X is usually explained as a filler letter added when airports moved from two-letter to three-letter codes.

Canada starts with Y. Every Canadian airport in the game has a code beginning with Y: YYZ (Toronto), YUL (Montreal), YVR (Vancouver), YYC (Calgary), YEG (Edmonton), YHZ (Halifax), YOW (Ottawa), YQB (Quebec City), YLW (Kelowna) and YYJ (Victoria). If you see a Y code, think Canada first.

Codes can change. Bishkek's Manas airport in Kyrgyzstan used FRU, a holdover from the city's Soviet-era name Frunze, until it switched to BSZ in August 2025.

Why airport codes matter for points travelers

Knowing codes isn't just trivia. Award searches, route maps and earning calculators all run on them. If you know your way around codes, these tools get faster:

Find every airline flying a route with Routes.
Check how far a flight is with the Flight Distance Calculator.
Compare award prices on a city pair in the Award Flight Pricer.
Find lounges at your next airport with the Airport Lounge Finder.

Frequently asked questions

How many guesses do I get?

Five. If you don't find the mystery airport in five guesses, the game reveals the answer and you can try again.

What's the difference between Standard and Expert?

Standard uses 312 well-known airports in 118 countries. Expert uses all 1,210 airports in the game, across 189 countries and territories, including small regional airports.

Can I search by city or airport code?

Yes. The search box matches airport names, cities and three-letter codes.

How is the direction clue calculated?

It compares the latitude and longitude of your guess and the mystery airport, like reading a flat world map, and shows one of eight compass directions. It's not the heading a plane would fly on a great-circle route.

Why does Chicago O'Hare use the code ORD?

The airport was originally called Orchard Field, and the code stayed when it was renamed O'Hare.

Is Guess the Airport free?

Yes. It's free to play with no account required, as many times as you like.

The bottom line

Guess the Airport is a quick geography workout for anyone who reads boarding passes for fun. Start in Standard, move to Expert when the big hubs get too easy, and see how few guesses you need. Then put those codes to work planning your next award trip.