We’ve had two years of fighting over semantics. The Rhode Island General Assembly should listen to the experts and change the name of the state’s largest airport from T.F. Green to Rhode Island International Airport.
Iftikhar Ahmad, CEO of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, says that this name change would help improve traffic at the airport.
We can’t determine absolutely whether that is true. But at least a name change would remove one of the excuses for its struggling performance.
At the heart of the name game is a gnawing problem for the airport: More people want to fly out than fly in (see “T.F. Green seeks to boost inbound traffic,” news, Feb. 22, by Patrick Anderson, as well as our podcast interview with Mr. Ahmad, “The Insiders with Ed Achorn”).
Consider the flights between T.F. Green and Ireland that ended last year. Norweigian Air jets leaving T.F. Green were on average more than 70% full. When they returned to Rhode Island, only 30% of the seats were filled.
As Mr. Anderson noted, “locals are using the airport to fly elsewhere much more often than people in other markets are flying here to visit.”
Mr. Ahmad believes that imbalance is to blame for a recent slippage in service, which had climbed after his arrival in 2016. The airport’s name is one explanation, he says.
Outside of Rhode Island (and maybe inside), few people know who Theodore F. Green was. Answer: A Depression-era Democratic governor of Rhode Island and longtime U.S. senator who died way back in 1966.
People around the country don’t know where T.F. Green is. “T.F. Green could be in Spokane, Washington, or Sheboygan, Wisconsin. It could be in Reno, Nevada,” Mr. Ahmad said.
In 2017, officials at the Bob Hope Airport in Southern California faced a similar challenge. The name of a superstar comedian from an earlier generation did not connect potential users to the airport’s advantages. It accordingly became Hollywood Burbank Airport to increase recognition of its location to out-of-staters.
Granted, many poorly educated Americans do not know what or where Rhode Island is. (One common error is to confuse it with Long Island, in New York.) But literate people who tend to fly are apt to be aware that Rhode Island is one of the 50 states, known for its sandy beaches, colonial towns and the Gilded Age magnificence of Newport.
Providence International Airport might conceivably work better as a name. But it appears that leaders in Warwick, where the airport is located, are so intensely parochial that they will not endure that.
The House approved the name change. The Senate should as well. Let’s get something done and move on, folks.
Of course, the thing that would really drive traffic to our airport is a vibrant economy attracting business travelers, instead of one of the nation’s worst business climates. We have written, year after year, about what that would take: a more competitive tax and regulatory structure, more efficient government and much stronger public schools.
This editorial first appeared in The Providence Journal on Feb. 25.
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