LVCVA to consider renaming McCarran airport

When it comes to promoting Las Vegas tourism, City Councilman Steve Ross would like to follow an example most recently set by Bozeman, Mont.

Officials in that city, population 37,280, concluded in December that having an airport called Gallatin Field, after the county where it is located, did not generate enough respect for the region's tourism industry.

So they switched the name to Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport at Gallatin Field and dropped mentions of Gallatin in places such as the airport website.

At Ross' urging, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority on Tuesday will formally discuss importing that concept, despite the vastly different circumstances, by peeling the name of the late Sen. Pat McCarran off McCarran International Airport and replacing it with Las Vegas International Airport.

Although the final say-so rests with the Clark County Commission because the county owns the airport, an endorsement from the authority could provide an important political nudge in that direction.

"At the LVCVA, we are constantly doing everything we can to brand Las Vegas," said Ross, who doubles as an authority board member.

A name change "would probably cost several million dollars" for items such as street signs and reprogramming the mccarran.com website, Ross said, while any boost in visitor totals "would not happen tomorrow but in the long run. In public office, we have to think about the long-range effects."

But aviation experts largely agree that the name of the Las Vegas airport makes no difference in attracting flights or passengers.

"I've never heard anybody refer to it as McCarran except people in the business. It's always Las Vegas," said Michael DiGirolamo, an aviation consultant and former deputy executive director of Los Angeles International Airport. "I just can't imagine what the relevance would be to the rest of the world."

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

While maintaining a neutral stance on the issue, Southwest Airlines, by far the largest carrier at McCarran, said the name doesn't really matter to them.

"When people are searching for fares on southwest.com, they put in Las Vegas,'' said airline spokeswoman Michelle Agnew. "When it comes to selling seats, the airport name isn't involved in the process."

All airline reservation systems are set up for Las Vegas or the LAS airport code - not McCarran.

Southwest, in fact, has incorporated its home base of Dallas Love Field into its identity, including a stock ticker symbol of LUV and a corporate logo featuring a heart with wings. At the same time, Agnew conceded, almost nobody knows that the airport was named for Moss Lee Love, a military pilot killed in a crash prior to World War I.

Even Bozeman airport director Brian Sprenger, who pushed for downplaying the Gallatin name, does not see the value of doing the same with McCarran. "When people are looking to go to Las Vegas, I don't see that the airport name makes much of a difference," he said.

By contrast, he said, Bozeman is vying for tourist traffic and flights with three other airports near Yellowstone National Park. "Gallatin had no name recognition," Sprenger said.

Bozeman may see marketing opportunities in its new airport name, but not all name changes are for the better, and sometimes they don't stick.

In 1983 Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was renamed for the generally beloved and recently deceased U.S. Sen. Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson. The ensuing outcry, particularly by Tacoma civic leaders who feared their city in the shadow of Seattle would be overlooked by convention and meeting planners, prompted a return to the original name just four months later.

But an airport's name can give a little marketing boost to a lesser-known city, aviation experts say. Fresno, Calif., has included Yosemite in its airport name, while Little Rock, Ark., earlier this year added Clinton, as in Bill and Hillary.

In 1994, Reno created a stir by adopting Reno-Tahoe International Airport, erasing former Sen. Howard Cannon's name while he was still alive, to better tout its tourism draw.

And in some cases, cities have had to make do with a name that came with a negative connotation.

Sioux City, Iowa, officials chafed at the embarrassment of its three-letter airport code, SUX. But when alternatives offered by the Federal Aviation Administration struck them as even worse, they made the best of it by creating a marketing campaign around the "Fly SUX" slogan, complete with T-shirts and a line of souvenirs.

In some places, having more than the city's name can help prevent confusion. Think Midway and O'Hare in Chicago; Bush Intercontinental and Hobby in Houston; LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty in the New York area; Narita and Haneda in Tokyo; Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted in London.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Airports on the periphery of a major metropolis often will take the big city's name to better market their favorable location, such as Chicago-Rockford in Illinois or Chicago-Gary in Indiana.

When Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air decided to start serving Phoenix five years ago, they picked Williams Gateway Airport, a former U.S. Air Force base with no commercial service at the time. Allegiant executives suggested a new name - Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport - and the airport authority went with it.

"We felt it would be a challenge for us to explain to people in Fargo, N.D., how convenient (Williams) was to Phoenix," said Allegiant spokesman Brian Davis, who negotiated the airline's entry there.

Even without the name change, he added, "We still would have gone in and been successful."

Still, County Commissioner and LVCVA board chairman Tom Collins cited one example where McCarran causes problems for Las Vegas. When the name change issue first arose at a June 12 authority meeting, Collins said that Clark County Aviation Director Randall Walker "writes Las Vegas on his cards to tell people where McCarran and Clark County is, once (in) a while."

However, the largest type size on the standard McCarran business card is reserved for the name Las Vegas printed in the upper left corner, with McCarran International Airport below it in letters about half that size.

At meetings where he attempts to recruit airlines to fly to Las Vegas, authority consultant Damon Hylton said the name McCarran doesn't even come up.

"I don't recall having this discussion with anybody when we sit down with them,'' he said, while stressing that he doesn't have a position on the name change issue. "We present ourselves as Las Vegas."

Contact reporter Tim O'Reiley at toreiley@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290.