Last week it was airlines - this week it is airports
This week”s editorial will not make ABTN popular with some airports nor a number of airlines (and one in particular). We are completely fed up with answering telephone, fax and email enquiries from would-be passengers asking just where is an airport. Girona is called by one carrier Barcelona and another Costa Brava. In fact the airport is 55 miles from the capital of Catalan and only 50 miles from the French border and on to Perpignan. Manston Airport, some 77 miles from London, has the prefix of the UK capital added to the airport”s name and the same goes for Biggin Hill (18 torturous miles), Luton (35), Southend (40) and Stansted (37). Torp is not Oslo which is 35 miles away. To get to Frankfurt from Hann will take well over an hour to cover 70 miles, and Prestwick, fine airport (with a railway station) is 35 miles south of Glasgow.
The EC needs to look into all this nonsense on two grounds. Firstly the whole thing is misleading and confusing, and secondly from an educational point of view we want youngsters to know geography and be aware of where places are and even in what country. It is no good advertising Malmo as Copenhagen (which the airline concerned seems to have now dropped) when it is in Sweden. It must have been tempting to name Baden Baden, Strasbourg-North. Carcassone as a scheduled airport from the UK started out as Toulouse, which is 65 miles away, although thankfully it is now standing up as a destination in its own right, only 40 miles from Narbonne and the Mediterranean coast.
There has to be, of course, a compromise with some landing strips. East Midlands has quickly settled the argument of whether it is Derby International or Nottingham International. Charles de Gaulle and Heathrow need no introductions but perhaps Ciampino could be renamed Rome Central to stop any confusion. It is only 12 miles from the Vatican, whilst Leonardo da Vinci, Fiumicino, the so-called international airport, is on the coast and nearly twice as far. And when it comes to Milan it gets even more bewildering. Linate, Malpensa and now Bergarmo are each named by their promoters Milan Airport. Still the practice is probably better than calling Birmingham Elmdon and Norwich Horsham St Faiths (as local news reporters tend to). The whole process needs tidying up. At least Sadaam Hussein International Airport is back at being Baghdad International.