There’s been a growing problem between two of Central Florida’s airports for about eight years now. In 2012, Melbourne International Airport (MLB), a medium-sized airport in Melbourne Florida, starting referring to itself as Orlando Melbourne International Airport. Melbourne is over 70 miles east of the City of Orlando.
Orlando International Airport (MCO) said that such a name change was “confusing” to passengers. We wrote all the details about the rift in this article a few years ago.
Anyway, fast forward a bit more and things had escalated to the extent that MCO took MLB to Federal court over this. Well, you know how slowly those things go so yeah, that’s not over yet.
But meanwhile, I happened to stop by MCO’s website recently and saw something very…interesting.
Their website must have been refreshed relatively recently since their front page has pictures that reference social distancing. But anyway, this is one of the sliders that are currently on their front page:
Did you catch that blurb on the bottom?
Orlando International Airport (MCO)
Much Closer to Orlando
Really, Orlando International Airport? Really?
MCO, of course, is the IATA code for Orlando International Airport. It stands for the airport’s former name, McCoy Air Force Base. The original MCO was a Strategic Air Command (SAC) installation, that was closed in 1975. The “new” airport kept the MCO as a hat tip to the original.
Sure, the blurb is clever. And I’m sure they paid someone a whole lot of money for them to figure out they could use MCO as Much Closer to Orlando but really, did they have to? Is it necessary? MCO is and will still be a behemoth in comparison to MLB. So yeah, it’s cute but whether they win the lawsuit or not, It just seems awfully petty to me.
As petty as the lawsuit, to be honest.
What do you think?
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
2 comments
While you may be right that MCO could be bigger about this, the idea of MLB being an Orlando airport is ludicrous and severely misleading to people who don’t know better. I’m with MCO on this one.
I don’t think it’s that petty, and as these things go, it is fairly clever. I’ve seen the Baton Rouge airport advertising on I-10 west of the New Orleans airport that if you flew from BTR, you wouldn’t have another hour left to drive. At least they’re trying to market themselves to their own city instead of as claiming to be near New Orleans. Waco’s airport advertises free parking “unlike in Dallas”. I’m sure the only reason LGA and JFK don’t dig at Newark with “why fly to New Jersey when you’re coming to New York?” is that all 3 are run by the same agency.