A few minutes ago, I landed at the Lindbergh Field San Diego Airport.
And that got me thinking about cool airport names. Why stick with a prosaic name like LAX when you could name your airport Sky Harbor (Phoenix) or Le Bourget (Paris)?
Many airports are named after military heroes. Consider Charles de Gaulle Airport (Paris), King Shaka International Airport (Durban), and my favorite, Alexander the Great Airport (Skopje, Macedonia).
Just occasionally, airports are named for artists. There’s Charles Schulz M. Airport in Sonoma. And in Malaga, they named one of their terminals after Pablo Picasso (c’mon, doesn’t the guy deserve a whole airport)?
The Italians certainly know how to name their airports. Leonardo Da Vinci Airport (Rome), Cristoforo Colombo Airport (Genova), Galileo Galilei Airport (Pisa), and of course, Giuseppe Verdi Parma Airport are great examples.
Hey, want to play some airport trivia? In which cities would you find these airports:
a. Mohammed V Airport
b. Franz Josef Strauß Airport
c. George Bush Interncontinental Airport
d. Chapatri Shivaji International Airport
e. Bob Hope Airport
f. Robin Hood Airport
{You’ll find the answer key below. Just scroll down.}
Some great musicians have also been “airported.” We have Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, John Lennon Airport in Liverpool, the Warsaw Chopin Airport and, best of all, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Airport in Salzburg.
But here’s my question: why not name airports after opera singers? After all, opera singers spend a lot of time in airports! And we sing stratospheric notes! Besides, naming an airport after a diva gives it a touch of class. Just imagine the dramatic effect of a Maria Callas Airport in Greece. Or a Joan Sutherland Airport in Australia. Or … how about the Luciano Pavarotti International Airport of Modena? Wouldn’t that be cool? Dare to dream!
Answer Key:
a. Casablanca
b. Munich
c. Houston
d. Mumbai
e. Burbank
f. Doncaster/Sheffield (you guessed Nottingham, didn’t you?)
Well now it’s time for me to fly to an airport that was once called the Great West Aerodrome… located in a little English hamlet named Heath Row. 😉
the Globetrotting Soprano 
The Bucharest International Airport was named after Henri Coanda (the guy who invented the fundamentals of modern flying – the jet engine) and its 3-letter code is either BUH or OTP – the latter coming from the name of the suburb of Bucharest where the airport is situated: Otopeni. Now, I do know you are fluent in Italian, so just say “Otopeni” out loud with the Italian accent, and you’ll understand what I mean.
Thinking about your suggestion, how about renaming the aforementioned airport the Angela Gheorghiu International Airport? 🙂
Brilliant idea! 😉
thanks.very good blog and very good share.
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