State’s airports named for aviators, governors, historians
With resentment simmering over Bridgeport’s seemingly abrupt decision to rename Igor Sikorsky Memorial Airport to add the city’s name, those opposed to the name change have cited tradition.
The airport, which is located in neighboring Stratford, bears the name of the inventor of the first practical helicopter, who conducted test flights at the site and founded the massive aviation company that bears his name.
Why change the name the airport has always had?
Except that Sikorsky Airport hasn’t always been Sikorsky Airport. It had at least three names before that and for most of its existence was called something else.
According to the city’s own website, the airport is built on land formerly known as Avon Field, a racetrack where early aviators landed in the grass infield. The land has the distinction of hosting the country’s first air show in 1911.
It became known as Mollison Field in 1933 after Captain Jim Mollison crash landed there during an attempt to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from Wales to New York, the website states.
When the city of Bridgeport purchased the field in 1937, it took on the name Bridgeport Municipal Airport. It would keep that name for 35 years until it was renamed after Sikorsky in 1972, the same year he died.
Name changes
The controversy over airport renaming is not limited to Sikorsky, nor is it new. And changing names is not as simple as putting up a new sign.
“When an airport changes names, it’s actually very complicated,” said Thomas “Tony” Sheridan, who chairs the Connecticut Airport Authority’s board of directors.
In addition to the costs of changing signs and business cards, and marketing a new name, if the airport is changing its 3-letter airport code, the change must be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA.
Sikorsky Airport still uses the code letters BDR, which places it five spots beneath Windsor Locks’ Bradley International Airport (BDL) in the International Air Transport Association’s code listing.
Bradley, though, nearly got a new name itself last year after the CAA commissioned a study into renaming it.
The authority had determined the airport, the state’s largest, had little name recognition outside New England. Part of the problem is that the name “Bradley” has no geographic location tied to it, according to CAA Director Kevin Dillon.
“When you’re over in Europe trying to market Bradley to the entire continent there it becomes a challenge,” he said at the time.
Sheridan, a native of Ireland, agreed. He cited the airport’s name as a reason why it doesn’t see more traffic from his home country.
“We have a saying in Ireland, that you’re on the Atlantic Ocean, and the next parish over is Boston,” he said. “Connecticut is such a fabulous place, and the name (Bradley) has always struck me, and unless there’s some reason not to (change it), I think that’s something we’ll revisit.”
After a year-long study, the CAA ultimately recommended against renaming the airport after determining the benefits of changing did not outweigh the costs.
“When you look at what we already spent marketing Bradley airport, plus what we’d have to spend on marketing the new name, and convincing the airlines to use the designation, it was not cost-effective,” Dillon said.
The leading choice for a potential new name, Southern New England - Bradley International Airport, was deemed too wordy. At 14 syllables, though, the new name would only have been one syllable longer than Bridgeport Igor Sikorsky Memorial Airport and would have been the same as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which incidentally was originally named for the founder of the Coca-Cola Company and has been renamed four times, most recently in 2003, according to the airport’s official history page.
Plus, Dillon said, most airlines don’t use the name Bradley anyway.
“If you’re in Albuquerque and you’re flying to Connecticut, the message board probably won’t say Bradley, it says Hartford,” he said.
That same naming convention would likely be applied to Sikorsky Airport by future commercial airlines, he said. Regardless of what the airport’s official name is, inbound flights would likely simply refer to the airport as Bridgeport.
“That’s probably a good assumption,” Dillon said.
Other airports
But despite keeping its name last year, Bradley itself has been renamed in the past. Tracing its origins to the 1940 acquisition by the state of 1,700 acres of land, the U.S. Army opened an airfield there the following year.
Simply called the Windsor Locks Army Air Base, the location acquired the name Army Air Base Bradley Field after 24-year-old Lt. Eugene Bradley of Antlers, Okla. apparently lost consciousness during a training flight and fatally crashed in August 1941, according to Connecticut’s Office of the State Historian.
Ownership of the airfield passed to the state after World War II ended, and the airport that still bears Bradley’s name is today the 55th busiest in the country, and second largest in New England, according to the CAA.
Of Connecticut’s other airports, most are named after the community where they are located, but some have names in addition to their municipality, and most of those names have changed over the years, too.
Tweed New Haven Airport (HVN) opened in 1931 as New Haven Municipal Airport, under the management of John “Jack” Tweed. A World War I veteran and military test pilot, the website earlyaviators.com credits Tweed as the third Connecticut resident to earn a pilot’s license. He went on to manage the airport for 25 years. The airport was renamed in his honor in 1961.
Hartford-Brainard Airport (HFD), founded in 1921, was named after Newtown C. Brainard, a Yale graduate and banker who served one term as Hartford mayor, from 1920-22 and happened to be mayor when the city dedicated its new airport. Brainard is best remembered today as an avid historian, and the airport that bears his name has the historical significance of being the first stop on aviator Charles Lindbergh’s victory tour following his 1927 transAtlantic flight, according to CAA.
The oldest airport in Connecticut, Plainville’s Robertson Airport, dates back to 1911, just eight years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight. Little more than a meadow used by private pilots, businessman Stamford Robertson purchased the land in 1941 and spent the next 30 years making improvements. It is not clear when the airport, also known as Robertson Field, acquired its name. Plainville’s website, plainvillect.com, reports the town purchased the airport in 2009.