OPINION: LVIA, ABE - what's in an airport name?

FROM THE EXPRESS TIMES

Not to sound hypocritical, but after 17 years training us to use the official identity — Lehigh Valley International Airport, or LVIA, as many of us have come to refer to it — why is our local airport authority suddenly nostalgic for ABE? That’s the latest decision in corporate branding in the Valley, and it’s enough to give anyone acronymophobia. (The fear of small clumps of capital letters taking over our lives.)

In 1994, the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority jumped on the Lehigh Valley bandwagon, abandoning the old name, Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton International Airport. LVIA was born, even if it didn’t immediately take flight.
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Back then, local officials and residents resisted the name change, asking the obvious question: Everybody knows the airport as ABE. Will people outside Pennsylvania become familiar with LVIA and Lehigh Valley? Undaunted, the authority pushed ahead, paying a consultant $85,000 for the rebranding advice and spending much more to change signs, stationery, logos, etc.

Even today, though, the official FAA airport code and luggage ID tags remain “ABE.” People in other airports still see arrivals and departures listed as Allentown. That’s how the pilot updates us: “It’s 70 degrees and raining in Allentown.”

Undaunted, the authority this week approved a redesigned website that will bring ABE back into the fold — not as the official designation, but as authority Chairman David Haines termed it, a better use of the airport’s “dual identity.”

Or as they call it everywhere else: destination confusion.

Frankly, travelers in and around the Lehigh Valley wouldn’t care about the name if they were afforded more competitive fares to more places. And a better break on parking rates. And people who didn’t harangue us about carrying more than a few ounces of shampoo. (Sorry. That last one’s not the authority’s doing.)

The airport authority is working on its bigger problems. It secured a new management firm. It’s still dickering over how to pay off a bungled expansion plan, which resulted in a lawsuit by developers and a judgment approaching $16 million. It’s still talking about a proposal to sell another holding, Queen City Airport in Allentown, for development. This week the authority revised the marketing subsidy it pays airlines for adding new flights, so it doesn’t end up paying for billboards for soon-to-be-defunct airlines.

The overriding issue for customers, however, is the pending arrival of Southwest Airlines, via its buyout of AirTran earlier this year, to LVIA.

Or ABE.

We don’t care, as long as they’re here.

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/09/opinion_lvia_abe_-_whats_in_an.html