News: No plan for Coventry Airport name change
Flights > News > # 1028 (20/10/2006)
No plan for Coventry Airport name change
Coventry airport has no plans for any change of name once the new terminal opens, according to the company's new chairman William Charnock.
Rumours the airport would be renamed were sparked by Wizzair’s decision to market it in Poland as "Birmingham / Coventry" because more Poles have heard of Birmingham. The budget airline starts flights from Coventry to Katowice in southern Poland next July. This kind of marketing ploy is not uncommon in the aviation industry, even if the city the airport claims to serve is a considerable distance away. Continental examples include Frankfurt Hahn (75 miles from Frankfurt), Paris Beauvais (65 miles from Paris) and Oslo Torp (75 miles from Oslo).
Name changes are also used to generate publicity and draw attention to an airport. Liverpool airport is now known as Liverpool John Lennon, and Belfast City has taken on the George Best moniker.
Speaking exclusively to Flightmapping.com, Charnock said Coventry had no intention of following in the footsteps of Liverpool or Belfast.
He said: "We will always be just Coventry airport. We think that Coventry airport is perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet, and marketing itself in its own right."
Charnock insisted that Coventry was keen to be known as a low-cost facility, but not as a secondary one, adding: “If you look at accessibility, we have two million people living within a 35 minute drive, and eight million people who could reach us within one hour. Coventry has recently seen hundreds of millions of pounds invested in regeneration schemes, and Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon is just down the road.”
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