Air travel involves a lot of acronyms and codes. The most common of these are airline codes. Airline codes are those two letters before your flight number that indicate which airline you're flying. For example, if your flight is AA 524, you're flying on American Airlines.

These two-letter codes are set by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). While some are easy to understand, like AA or UA, others like WN may be less intuitive. We refer to a lot of these airlines by their IATA code in our Facebook group, so this handy list can help you become more familiar with these codes.

The following list contains the IATA codes for most of the world's major airlines and the main U.S. airlines:

AA: American Airlines
AC: Air Canada
AF: Air France
AM: Aeroméxico
AS: Alaska Airlines
AT: Royal Air Maroc (RAM)
AV: Avianca
AY: Finnair
B6: JetBlue Airways
BA: British Airways
BR: EVA Air
CM: Copa Airlines
CX: Cathay Pacific
CZ: China Southern Airlines
DL: Delta Air Lines
EI: Aer Lingus
EK: Emirates Airlines
ET: Ethiopian Airlines
EW: Eurowings GmbH
EY: Etihad Airways
F9: Frontier Airlines
FI: Icelandair
FR: Ryanair
G3: GOL Linhas Aéreas
G4: Allegiant Air
HA: Hawaiian Airlines
IB: Iberia Airlines
JL: Japan Airlines
KE: Korean Air
KL: KLM
LH: Lufthansa
LX: Swiss Air Lines
LY: El Al Israel Airlines
MS: Egyptair
MX: Breeze Airways
NH: All Nippon Airways
NK: Spirit Airlines
NZ: Air New Zealand
OS: Austrian Airlines
OZ: Asiana Airlines
QF: Qantas
QR: Qatar Airways
RJ: Royal Jordanian
SA: South African Airways
SK: Scandinavian Airlines (SAS)
SN: Brussels Airlines
SQ: Singapore Airlines
SV: Saudia
SY: Sun Country Airlines
TG: Thai Airways
TK: Turkish Airlines
TP: TAP Portugal
UA: United Airlines
UX: Air Europa
VA: Virgin Australia
VS: Virgin Atlantic
WN: Southwest
Y4: Volaris

For help with overall terms relating to award travel, check out our points & miles glossary. A list of airport codes is available here.