Times Editorial : Excuse me?
Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Back in the 1990 s, as Sam Walton’s vision of a new regional airport was marching toward reality, the people involved in converting the gently rolling terrain into a flat port for thousands of flights a year had a conundrum.
How should the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport be referred to within the airline business, where three-letter codes are the shorthand for airports around the nation ? You know, the DFWs, the LAXs and such. The Federal Aviation Administration, such a bastion of creativity, suggested identifiers like GYM, DIP or even OOO.
Airport officials settled on XNA, the closest they could get to the identifier they really wanted, which was NWA. The FAA said NWA wasn’t available because all three-letter codes beginning with “ N” are reserved for the Navy, except for a few older airports.
Since it opened in 1998, hundreds of thousands of people have flown to and from its terminal. The experience is a far, far cry from flying into and out of Drake Field in Fayetteville, which used to be home to all the commercial air carriers serving the region. In 2007, 598, 886 passengers boarded planes at XNA.
From the beginning, airlines struggled with what to call their new destination. Sure, all the luggage tags simply say XNA, but back in 1998 as American Airlines was the first to move to the new airport, its spokesman predicted flights to Northwest Arkansas would be listed as Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers on arrival and departure boards and in the systems used by travel agents and others.
Airport officials emphatically assured people that the destination would not be listed as Highfill, the small Benton County community that is actually home to XNA.
It could hardly be anticipated, though, that nearly 10 years after the airport’s opening, airlines still can’t figure out how to refer to the regional airport as a destination.
On one recent trip back home, we heard a flight attendant repeatedly welcome passengers to “ Northwest Regional Arkansas. ” On another journey, our boarding passes said we were headed to Bentonville, but the departure board at Denver International Airport advised us that the flight’s destination was “ Fayetteville, AR. ”
Depending on which crew member is doing the announcements, passengers can still hear “ Welcome to Fayetteville” as they taxi toward the Alice L. Walton Terminal. Never mind that getting to Fayetteville requires a 20-mile drive.
Those who know the area just shake their heads, but who can blame those poor Wal-Mart vendors flying in for a visit to the Mother Ship for getting a tad confused.
All this is why 3 rd District Congressman John Boozman recently sent the Air Transport Association a letter. Perhaps, he suggests, the organization can help clear things up. A man can dream.
While it probably makes the local chamber of commerce crowd pleased as punch to see Fayetteville receive all those extra mentions, the obvious reality is that the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport is not in Fayetteville. Heck, it’s not even in Washington County.
So, what should people say to explain where airline passengers are landing ?
How about (duh ) Northwest Arkansas ?
Not only is this obvious, it makes all the sense in the world. Increasingly, the population around these parts views all of Northwest Arkansas as their world. People live in one town and work in another. During the day, Interstate 540 becomes the region’s main street. The area’s new minor league baseball team isn’t going to be known as the Springdale Naturals, but will instead carry the regional moniker everywhere it goes. Heck, the airport itself is the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport.
Consistency is needed. With frequent use of “ Northwest Arkansas” by all airlines, the efforts to market the area and to reduce the confusion for passengers will pay off. People won’t show up at Fayetteville’s airport believing they can catch a commercial flight. Passengers won’t step off planes in Highfill believing they’re just a stone’s throw from the University of Arkansas campus.
Surely, the folks we relied on to safely fly people to and from Northwest Arkansas can straighten this out.
If nothing else, perhaps a simple “ Welcome to Wal-Mart” would be the most accurate description for most passengers.
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