An ancient name for a very modern aiport

In a previous post I commented on the inauguration of the new Lleida-Alguaire airport. One aspect of this new infrastructure that I think deserves a comment on its own is the choice of IATA code.

At first glance one might thought the obvious choices to be: LLE or LED for Lleida, but these correspond to Malelane (South Africa) and Pulkovo (St.Petersburg, Russia) maybe adding "Alguaire" to the code but this gives us:

LAG is taken by LaGuardia airport in NYC, LLA to Lulea in Sweden, LAL to Lakeland, FL.

so the winner was: ILD!

What does ILD stand for?

"Ilerda", the roman name of the city of Lleida, that also happen to be the location of one of the battles of the Roman Civil War between Julius Caesar and Pompey....in 49BC!

Aviation has, thus led this ancient name to a modern revival...!