Yesterday, I checked FlightAware for the arrival status of a passenger I was picking up at KMSY and noticed that the full name of the airport (Louis Armstrong New Orleans Int’l) was displayed instead of the normal “New Orleans Int’l.” I looked up a couple of other airports that I regularly fly into and their correct full names were listed. I checked back a few hours later and the full names had reverted back to the normal names displayed (ex. KGAO is the South Lafourche Leonard Miller Jr. Airport and it is back to just displaying Miller Jr. Arpt, which is kind of annoying because it says Miller Jr. Arpt Airport when you look at the airport status page on FlightAware). Is there any particular reason the correct full names aren’t displayed ALL the time?
For aesthetic and familiarity reasons on the airport boards pages; you must have seen it between when the new airports database was loaded and corrected.
How do you decide on which name to call an airport? Like SNA. Santa Ana, John Wayne, Orange County, Anaheim… I’m pretty sure that everyone who flies there has a different name for the place.
My guess would be what real people - and not politicians, bureaucrats, and the news media - call it.
Outside of the government and the media, no body calls it the Norman Mineta San Jose International Airport. Same thing for SNA - outside of the two entities mentioned, every one I know calls it Orange County Airport.
I’ve yet to hear anybody in my workplace call it Bob Hope Airport (and we have a lot of people traveling between OAK and BUR). It’s always Burbank Airport.