Flightster

The Bard v the King for Glasgow Airport title?

• by Jools Stone
• on September 30th, 2010
• 2 Comments

Unless you’ve lived in Britain you’ve probably never heard of Prestwick. No reason why you would. It’s a small,  fairly unremarkable town on the west coast of Scotland. Most Londoners would struggle to point to it on a map if they’re being honest.

Elvis Paisley?

One of its few claims to fame is the fact that Elvis Presley made his one and only brief appearance on British shores at Prestwick Airport 50 years ago on his way back from military service in Germany. Apparently he looked confused, mumbled ‘where am I?’ to his army handler and politely refused to remove his hat for the assembled paparazzi.

Nowadays it’s Glasgow’s secondary airport and a prime Scottish hub for much reviled ‘no frills’ carrier Ryanair and others. A few years ago they tried to jazz the place up a bit by giving it an upbeat, colloquial strap line: ‘Pure Dead Brilliant!’ scream the graphics in the concourse. The media had a field day and you can’t blame them really. Even said aloud in a decent Scots accent it sounds a bit daft and overly optimistic.

Back the Bard

Recently though there’s been a campaign to inject a bit more Scottish pride into the place by re-naming it Robert Burns International. Already some 5000 supporters have signed up for a petition through facebook since it was launched in December 2009. It’s certainly a much more imaginative branding gambit. I’ve put my name down for it too.

Braveheart Bid

We’ve seen this sort of thing before of course.  A member of the Scottish Parliament once called for Glasgow’s main airport to be named after William Wallace a few years ago, while the Scotsman newspaper revived the story on a certain, well chosen, day of the year, much to the consternation of  fervent nationalists.  (And if a spot of Braveheart baiting tickles your fancy, try casually remarking on the striking resemblance between the figure atop Stirling’s Wallace Monument and Mel Gibson.)

Welcome to Burns Country

There is a powerful logic to the campaign beyond the obvious national chest beating.  Being in Ayrshire, it’s right in the heart of  ‘Burns Country’ just a short drive away from Burns Cottage and the soon-to-be unveiled Robert Burns Birthplace Museum.  It’s certainly closer to ‘a ‘that’ than it is Glasgow.  The Bard arguably carries more international clout than the city name too, as the thousands of Burns Nights and Burns Suppers held each January across the globe show.

Geneaology tourism, in all its many shades of tartan, is a serious business for our tourist board, VisitScotland. Plus the Burns legacy is undoubtedly a massive draw for overseas and domestic cultural travellers alike, including those without the much-coveted Celtic routes.

Going South

Head south of the border though and it all gets a bit more pedestrian. London’s airports are unimaginatively named Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and London City respectively, not forgetting Luton Airport of course which is so glamorous it had its own novelty song.  They’re not even trying are they?

Most UK cities are not large enough to support a second airport but even Nottingham has Robin Hood and Liverpool John Lennon. Venice must feel very smug about bagging Marco Polo, Salzburg can wax lyrical about Mozart and Belfast must have a warm, sozzled glow about its tribute to the late footie legend George Best.

Flights of Fancy

Go a bit further afield though and things get much more interesting, even if many of the wacky names have been inherited by a pure flook of geographical default rather than by design. Canada in particular excels itself by giving us such gems as Pickle Lake, Asbestos Hill, Slave Lake and Deception, among others.  I’ll bet the bag check at Tanzania’s Mafia Airport is pretty thorough and just imagine how despondent passengers buying a return flight from Australia’s Useless Loop must feel?

Air Force One

Then there are those cities which have plumped for statesmen. Paris has Charles De Gaulle, Kenya Jomo Keyatta, while Johannesburg fought hard to claim  former ANC President Oliver Tambo for their’s. Stateside of course you have George H Bush, Reagan, JFK and more.

But political climates change and there’s always the danger that today’s heroic leader soon becomes tomorrow’s hated despot.  Robert Mugabe International anyone?  And did I mention George Dubbya already?

How do these things get decided anyway? I wonder if John Wayne shot down any rivals in Orange County or if Turkey’s  Batman Airport had to kapow some baddies into touch?

The Big Showdown

So maybe Burns should duke it out with Elvis for the title. Something for Cameron and Obama to chew over at their next pow wow. Either way there’s room for improvement at Glasgow Prestwick.

What do you think? Should our cities get more creative with their airports?

Maybe it could even be a mandatory requirement to refresh them every 30 years or so.  It’s not like they’ve anything better to do with our tax dollars is it?

Who would you like to see immortalised  as your city’s global gateway?

Jools Stone

Jools Stone's blog, He Thought of Trains, chronicles the highs - and occasional lows - of traveling by train in an age of budget flights.