St. Augustine Airport Mulls Name Change

Ah, what's in a name? Airport name changes are always interesting to me. On one hand, the airport wants to promote its city, but airlines also want to have marketable names to work with. For example, my home airport, T.F. Green in Rhode Island, is actually in the city of Warwick but is always marketed as Providence. This does not make Warwick happy. In fact, the city pays for advertisements in the airport that remind passengers of where they actually landed. When some airlines started selling the destination as "Providence/Newport," the mayor of Warwick got more ticked off than usual. Another local story (for me, at least) is Manchester in New Hampshire - the airport decided to change its name to Manchester-Boston Regional Airport to emphasize that it was an alternative to Boston Logan.

One of the most current cases is St. Augustine's airport. It hasn't been all that lucky in generating commercial service - the one time it did it was during Skybus' short existence as an airline. And that airline decided to market the airport as Jacksonville/Daytona Beach. Right now, the airport is thinking of the name "Northeast Florida Regional Airport at St. Augustine." The hope is that the name, which implies a larger area, will make it more attractive to airports. Though some locals don't like the idea of having St. Augustine all the way at the end of the airport's name.

Personally, I like the idea from the marketing perspective, though I think a name change is one of the easier steps in trying to court airlines. Read more here.