wilebill
10-23-2007, 10:04 PM
What to do when your code SUX (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071023.wa2airports23/BNStory/Front/home)
It's not much - only a three-letter code on a luggage tag that gets fixed to a bag when it's checked at the airport. But for some travellers, it's also a first calling card from their destination - a kind of alphabetic ambassador that confirms a carefully crafted itinerary or signals an exotic adventure.
While New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport owns the rather intuitive JFK and Toronto's Pearson gets the rather innocuous YYZ, Sioux City has had to live with, well, SUX.
Sioux City officials have twice petitioned the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration for a change in the unflattering code. Upon their second attempt in 2002, Mayor Craig Berenstein called the moniker an "embarrassment."
But when the FAA proposed alternatives - GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY - the airport's trustees decided they weren't much of an improvement.
So board member Dave Bernstein decided it might be time take the lemon of a code they were given and make the proverbial lemonade.
The airport's new marketing campaign, complete with T-shirts, caps, posters and a new website, urges air travellers to "Fly SUX" (more details at http://www.flysux.com (http://www.flysux.com/)).And to think, they could have had GAY.
It's not much - only a three-letter code on a luggage tag that gets fixed to a bag when it's checked at the airport. But for some travellers, it's also a first calling card from their destination - a kind of alphabetic ambassador that confirms a carefully crafted itinerary or signals an exotic adventure.
While New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport owns the rather intuitive JFK and Toronto's Pearson gets the rather innocuous YYZ, Sioux City has had to live with, well, SUX.
Sioux City officials have twice petitioned the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration for a change in the unflattering code. Upon their second attempt in 2002, Mayor Craig Berenstein called the moniker an "embarrassment."
But when the FAA proposed alternatives - GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY - the airport's trustees decided they weren't much of an improvement.
So board member Dave Bernstein decided it might be time take the lemon of a code they were given and make the proverbial lemonade.
The airport's new marketing campaign, complete with T-shirts, caps, posters and a new website, urges air travellers to "Fly SUX" (more details at http://www.flysux.com (http://www.flysux.com/)).And to think, they could have had GAY.