To be sure, it was unorthodox, but no one is arguing with Bernstein’s obvious success. While he was at it, he also changed the airport’s official website to, again without seeking permission. With Lindblade’s help, Bernstein created the logo and the T-shirts without consulting his fellow airport board members or the city council. “Let’s exploit it rather than let it bother us.” “We have always believed, ‘Why fight it? Why not have fun with it?’ ” adds Luanne Lindblade, the owner of Sioux City Gifts, the company that markets the Fly SUX items. “We got stuck with this SUX thing, so we’re going to embrace it, make it something that we can all laugh about,” Bernstein says. Since then, the line of Fly SUX merchandise has soared and now includes coffee mugs, luggage tags and bumper stickers. The president of Northwest Airlines - in Sioux City to visit his company’s new call center - was among the first to ask for some. As word of his marketing ploy spread, he was deluged with requests for the shirts. Last fall, Bernstein - who’s an airport board member - had about a dozen T-shirts printed to give to travel agents at an appreciation dinner.

“It’s ‘S-U-X,’ ” says Bernstein, enunciating the letters one by one. “Thanks but no thanks,” the local leaders told the bureaucrats in Washington.įast forward 20 years, walk into the gift shop at Sioux Gateway Airport, and witness a complete about-face: You’ll see T-shirts, baseball caps and other merchandise displaying the “Fly SUX” logo. The FAA offered them GAY, as in Sioux Gateway Airport. Pete have embraced their code the airport’s website is After more than 50 years being the butt of jokes, Sioux City officials in 1988 appealed to the Federal Aviation Administration to change the airport’s moniker. It’s on the site of the former Pinellas Army Airfield.Īs in Sioux City, the folks in St. Petersburg-Clearwater (Fla.) International Airport isn’t famous for its lemon meringue pies, even though its code is PIE. When the property - then a plantation - was sold to a livestock dealer, it was renamed in honor of the pilot: Moisant Stock Yards hence the code MSY.Īnd St. New Orleans’ airport is located, coincidentally, on the land on which pioneer aviator John Moisant died in a plane crash in 1910. Chicago’s O’Hare Airport got ORD because it sits on the site of a former farming community known as Orchard Place.

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