Among the eight posts on Ethics Alarms officially filed under “naming ethics” controversies there are four children (“Hades,” “Adolf,” a suicide in the family…), college buildings, helicopters, a mountain, and a law school. To that select group we now add an airport, and this case looks suspiciously like deliberate mischief if one is conspiratorially inclined.
I am not, of course.
Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland that “There is no there there,” and apparently the Port of Oakland Commission wants to embrace that description. It is preparing to rename the Oakland airport, currently “Oakland International Airport,” to “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport.” This would seem to intentionally encourage confusion with the better-known (and more heavily used) San Francisco International Airport, just across the bridge and 25 miles away. Before it started falling apart in chunks thanks to being nearly at Grand Zero in The Great Stupid, San Francisco was the glamorous, popular, golden girl on campus and poor Oakland was her fat, homely girlfriend.
San Francisco is fine with homeless people crapping on the sidewalks and mobs looting stores, but this is an offense it will not countenance! San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu on Monday sent a letter to the Port of Oakland Commission, threatening legal action. Chiu says that the new name would cause confusion, especially for international travelers who may not speak or read English. “If the Port of Oakland…elects to proceed with the proposed name change, then unfortunately the City will have no choice other than to pursue necessary legal action” based on trademark infringement and dilution claims under federal and state law. Chiu believes that the proposed new name was conceived to “intentionally divert travelers who may be unfamiliar with the relevant geography….”
There’s a precedent for this kind of plot—can you guess where? Kansas created a Kansas City right next to Kansas City, Missouri to attract business, attention and travelers who got the two cities confused.
Ethics Alarms 
While it makes sense to me that local authorities would control naming of their ports and such, I am a little surprised that the feds (Dept. of Transportation or FAA) would not have some control over that (veto power, if nothing else), as they have to make sure pilots are not confused, airport designation (MSP, BWI, etc.) are not confusing.
-Jut
While local jurisdictions choose the names used in general public situations, since 1945 the airport designator codes “(MSP, BWI, etc.)” have been controlled and assigned by the International Air Transport Authority, a multinational aviation industry association. The codes are usually but not always chosen in accord with a local jurisdiction’s suggestion. One of IATA’s considerations is avoiding confusion.
Washington National is still DCA, not RRN or any such.
Yep. Just like O’Hare Airport is ORD (for the original name Orchard Field) and Orlando International is MCO (for McCoy Field). Although Orlandians who don’t work for The Mouse have been known to say the IATA code stands for “Mickey’s Corporate Office”.
I was curious (and killing time before a Dr.’s appointment) so I did a websearch. “RRN” is an existing IATA airport code for the airport at Serra Norte, a small, primarily mining industry, town in northern Brazil.
Love the Disney meaning of MCO. Hah. Florida was nothing but flight training bases during WWII, much like Greater Phoenix and various parts of Texas. Clear skies.
I’m no Stein scholar, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. No, wait, I read an article not so long ago which posited that Stein’s “There’s no there there” line has been taken out of context (hijacked?) by our snotty, suburb-despising, Brooklyn-dwelling betters and their predecessors. Stein was evidently brought up on a small, semi-rural farm in Oakland that was soon developed into housing. Her comment simply meant the place she grew up in no longer existed.
Couldn’t the powers that be just add a tag line to “Oakland Airport” along the lines of, “Don’t worry, you won’t get killed or car-jacked here.” I think the Phoenix airport (quaintly called, to this day, in a sort of Buck Rogers way, “Phoenix Sky Harbor”) calls itself “America’s friendliest airport.”
(Why would anyone want to be a Stein scholar?)
That’s an interesting factoid. It’s one of two quotes that keeps Stein’s faint cultural memory alive, the other being “A rose is a rose is a rose.” In its apparently proper context, the Oakland quote is mundane and forgettable. Gertrude is lucky she’s been misrepresented.
The “rose” line is a pretty pithy comment upon Romanticism. I’ll give her that. But I think she’s simply famous for being a lesbian and an American in Paris. The latter of which was much made of by 20th Century English teachers who couldn’t afford to go to places like Europe. Much the same as Earnest Hemingway’s work was aggrandized because it was placed overseas.
The Oakland airport authorities are responding to geographic ignorance, which is sadly understandable. With friends in northern California, I have found the smaller Oakland airport a better destination than SFO when I fly to the region, particularly for the ease of renting a car and driving elsewhere. But I have observed people not even considering it as an option.
I can also cite another precedent which is, to me, literally (I live about five miles from this airport) closer to home.
In 2015 the Melbourne, Fla. “Melbourne International Airport” changed its name to “Orlando Melbourne International Airport”. It was described at the time as a move to draw passengers planning an Orlando-area vacation. It is, I’d agree, a very convenient airport to use if someone is planning to visit both theme parks (less than an hour away) and beaches (just a few minutes away) during their visit. Fewer flight options but also far less crowded and easier to get in and out of. This area is, for statistical and demographic purposes, also considered part of the greater Orlando market.
But the larger Orlando International Airport didn’t appreciate the change and took the Melbourne Aviation Authority to court. After six years of legal combat the two sides found a solution. By changing “Orlando Melbourne International Airport” to “Melbourne Orlando International Airport”. I ask the lawyers reading this, how many billable hours between 2015 to 2021 did it take to come up with that?
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2021/05/28/central-florida-airports-settle-dispute-over-use-of-orlando-in-name/
Speaking of a head-smacking level of geographic ignorance, on the part of both travelers and airline personnel, while I don’t think it was a factor in the renaming, about a year before the Melbourne Fla. airport changed its name a couple from Massachusetts landed here thinking they had bought tickets to fly to Melbourne, Australia. If I’d been the reporter covering this, I’d have asked them if they’d wondered how a smaller airliner like a 737 could cross the Pacific from the east coast of the US or if they’d noticed their Melbourne destination was in the same time zone as the Atlanta airport from which they’d departed.
Greg, I’m sorry to report it probably took me six or seven years of being around litigators to finally realize they are not problem solvers, they are controversy sustainers. They have no interest in getting a resolution to the matter. They want to stretch it out for as many billable hours as possible. Prompt, reasonable resolutions are simply NOT good for business.
Just saw Southwest Airlines weighing in on the re-naming. Needless to say, they’re all in on the re-naming as Oakland’s where they fly in and out of.
Oakland has long marketed its airport as an alternative to SFO, it being more convenient to “east bay” locations. That proposed name will never catch on, its too cumbersome, it doesn’t “roll off the tongue”. Apparently they are tired of naming things after convicted felons. [The SF airport isn’t even in SF…]
Early in our marriage and cash strapped, my wife and I booked flights to Washington, D.C. The best prices we found were actually out of the various Houston airports – so much so that driving from Fort Worth to Houston to fly made more financial sense than flying out of our much closer Fort Worth – Dallas airport. We even found better savings somehow by booking the tickets separately and not as a round-trip (or so it seemed).
We drove down to IAH (Houston Intercontinental or George Bush Intercontinental) and were off to enjoy D.C. After the jaunt, satisfied but weary and ready to be on the road home again, we flew back in to Houston, landing a little later than 11 pm. Young and energy-filled fools we were, we had no qualms driving the 5 hours home after midnight.
As we walked the airport we came to distinct impression that this was not even remotely similar in appearance to the airport we flew out on, so upon further scrutiny of the itinerary printed on our tickets and a confirmation of why booking separate tickets turned out to be such a frugal decision was the discovery that we’d landed in HOU (Hobby or Houston-Hobby).
For those unfamiliar, that’s a 40 minute drive (recall our car is at the other airport – so we had to scramble to find a ride at almost midnight – luckily a buddy who lived local and was a known late nighter came through for us) + walking through the airport with luggage + getting to the parking lot our car was in.
Long story short, *and we should have known better*, we were still thrown off by even basic similarities in Names/Airport codes in our haste.
Houston Hobby. Home of Southwest Airlines and Herb Kelleher who built an entire airline around getting landing slots as secondary airports all across the nation.
We love flying in/out of Hobby…Mere minutes from curb, through security & to the gate. Same for baggage pickup.
Ryan Air and Easy Jet in Europe were perfect models of that for us poor college kids on a study abroad.
Back when travel agents existed, one told us of getting an angry call from a customer for whom she had bought a ticket from Atlanta to Charleston. He was mad that he hadn’t found himself in West Virginia when he got off the plane.
I too would be irate. Though a drive from Charleston SC to Charleston WV would probably be faster than a drive from south Houston to north Houston during rush hour.
Changing from “Oakland International Airport,” to “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport” should hopefully reduce the number of people who end up travelling to “Auckland International Airport” in New Zealand.
There was a geographically challenged British comedienne who had just broke up with her boyfriend and so decided to go on a holiday so she decided to go to Costa Rica thinking it was in Spain like the popular beaches of the Costa del Sol, Costa Brava and Costa Blanca. She only discovered her mistake when she asked why the flight was taking so long.
If the goal is to trick people into visiting Oakland, how does that work?
I’m visiting San Francisco and I’m tricked into landing in Oakland.
All this means is I’m now angry at Oakland on my way to my hotel in San Francisco with no visiting done in Oakland.
I worked for a few months in KC, KS, went across the river to watch the Royals win their first division title.
Silly me, I just assumed that Kansas City organically grew up on both sides of the border, somewhat akin I think to Texarkana.
For that matter, it was only a few years ago that there was some sort of survey or border adjustment over in Charlotte, NC. I believe there were a few folks who woke up one morning to discover they now lived in South Carolina instead of North Carolina.
And, by the by, the KC Star doesn’t seem to have a paywall, but it won’t let you read the story if you have an ad blocker enabled. I am seeing more sites like that recently, it seems like. Mostly I just say, “It would’ve been nice to read that story, but oh well” and close the tab.
Just to let you know, Jack, if Ethics Alarms ever did that — I’d grumble but I’d turn off my blocker. However, I won’t ever read enough of those other web sites to get addicted.