I think this may be a 'bug': as you zoom into the US west coast, SAN is visible before LAX. But LAX serves much more people every day, so a random person is much more likely to care about LAX. Intuitively, it seems to me that LAX should show up first. That could be intentional, but I can't think of a good reason why that choice would be made.

Google Maps has had this bug with street names not revealing based on any rational priority at varying zoom levels.. for like a decade.

I'm going to start using this as an interview question for people to solve.

Similar in Australia, BNE shows up before SYD.

Edit: actually it's even weirder. Here's the zoom levels I see, from zoomed out, to zoomed in:

- BNE, MEL

- BNE, SYD, MEL

- BNE, CBR, MEL (??)

- BNE, SYD, CBR, MEL

I think the map is biased towards airports with the most disruptions, not the largest.