Louis Armstrong Airport, The MSY Mystery
Louisiana
New Orleans' airport carries the three-letter code MSY, which has nothing to do with Louis Armstrong. It stands for Moisant Stock Yards, the cattle pasture that once covered this ground. The land is named for John Moisant, a daredevil aviator who crashed and died nearby in nineteen ten.
After his death the property was used to graze livestock, which is how it acquired its unglamorous nickname. In nineteen forty the city began planning a new airport on the site, but World War Two intervened and the Army took over the land as a military airbase. Commercial service finally began in May nineteen forty-six, when aviation legend the airport opened as Moisant Field.
The airport was renamed for Louis Armstrong in two thousand one to mark the jazz legend's one hundredth birthday, but the cattle-yard code has never changed.
