R J Mitchell International Airport.

Just a hunch here…but somehow I don’t think BA, the CAA or FAA (or anyone else) would ever get Southampton and Milwaukee confused… 😀

Hey, if BA can fly you somewhere and your baggage to somewhere the other side of the world anything is possible 🙂

My personal view is that all airports should be named after their location.
the best honour we can give to reginald mitchell is to keep restoring and displaying spitfires.

Bush jnr is ‘the pilot’ also.

ANG I believe…Century fighters.

The ‘Times of England’ has alluded to it being a convenient way to dodge the Vietnam draft.

There were reported ‘anomalies’ with his flight times and log book.

Mark

I meant the one who made an effort.

mick

Bush snr is the pilot, Avengers.

mick

Bush jnr is ‘the pilot’ also.

ANG I believe…Century fighters.

The ‘Times of England’ has alluded to it being a convenient way to dodge the Vietnam draft.

There were reported ‘anomalies’ with his flight times and log book.

Mark

Without seeming to state the obvious – the current George Bush who some consider a
T*** isn’t without a shadow of a doubt a decorated WWII pilot . I think if your going to have a clash of swords at least one of the sparing parties should realise that they might not be casting insults at the same member of the Bush family tree!

Bush snr is the pilot, Avengers.

mick

Yes it does offend me…to a degree. I would never consider insulting (not merely disagreeing but using a rude word) on a UK politician or HRH QEII.
Why, because I figure if a country votes in someone they have a reason for doing so…and since I’m not a voter in your country, I’ll keep the insults to myself.
Feel free to say you disagree on the war or whatever, but keep it civil.

And for Hoozarmy …”uneducated” he is not…Do you have a degree from a Oxford or Cambridge? Both Bush’s attended Yale, the younger has an advanced business degree. Again, he may be wrong, and you’re free to disagree, but don’t go out of your way to insult someone.

I do say the same about members of the British government and have in the past about the royal family. Tony Blair is an ******** and always will be.
As for having an advanced business degree, I suppose that means he can screw up with extreme confidence.
No I don’t have a degree, unfortunatly I have often had to go in and sort out Aviation related companies that have been decimated by degree educated managers and executives that have no clue about aircraft operation and maintenance, but they have a good way of making a loss into a negative profit and leaving with a big pay-off.

mick

Without seeming to state the obvious – the current George Bush who some consider a
T*** isn’t without a shadow of a doubt a decorated WWII pilot . I think if your going to have a clash of swords at least one of the sparing parties should realise that they might not be casting insults at the same member of the Bush family tree!

I just consider GW Bush a Tw-t or does that offend you.
mick

Yes it does offend me…to a degree. I would never consider insulting (not merely disagreeing but using a rude word) on a UK politician or HRH QEII.
Why, because I figure if a country votes in someone they have a reason for doing so…and since I’m not a voter in your country, I’ll keep the insults to myself.
Feel free to say you disagree on the war or whatever, but keep it civil.

And for Hoozarmy …”uneducated” he is not…Do you have a degree from a Oxford or Cambridge? Both Bush’s attended Yale, the younger has an advanced business degree. Again, he may be wrong, and you’re free to disagree, but don’t go out of your way to insult someone.

Moocher wrote:

For your information I’m not anti US, I just consider GW Bush a Tw-t or does that offend you.

I’ll second that, and raise it to ‘Uneducated tw@t’. It matters not that he is the US president, he would still be a tw@t if he was the president of Togo!

Whatever your politics (and quite frankly spare us your anti-US rantings)…it’s better to name an airport after a president and decorated WWII flyer than a drunken footballer or an uneducated pop star whose simplistic “love-drugs” philosophy is as dated as his Neru jacket.

I like the Beatles, but to name the airport after Lennon, who wasn’t a very nice guy (the new…and widely acclaimed…Beatles biography which I’m currently reading says he used to go up to amputee vets and stick out his hand to shake their missing limb..and mock anyone with a handicap) and who by all accounts couldn’t get out of the town fast enough, seems a shallow PR-bid.

The comment was made tongue in cheek, so don’t get on your high horse and start ranting on. I don’t agree with Lennon airport either.
For your information I’m not anti US, I just consider GW Bush a Tw-t or does that offend you.

mick

Madam did make the tea last night, she thought that R J Mitchell was the chief planning officer for Uttlesford District Council, bless.

leave the airport name alone and name the terminal – keeps everybody happy.

here we have:

DIA – Denver International Airport (guess where that is)

and the tent shapped / mountain range like terminal is call Jeppesen Terminal (named after that chap Elrey B. Jeppesen) whose maps and plates help every pilot get around.

did I say “the” terminal – yes one – with 93 gates and 6 levels, on an airport that is 53 square miles. (but of course the complex computerised baggage system took for ever to sort out 😮 )

pah – who needs 5 terminals plopped down in random fashion I ask you (LHR)

p.s. Southampton will always be known as Eastleigh and EM is still Castle Don

but what do I know? I’ve been Americanized 😮

We could always call it GW Bush airport, we all know who that tw-t is.
mick

Whatever your politics (and quite frankly spare us your anti-US rantings)…it’s better to name an airport after a president and decorated WWII flyer than a drunken footballer or an uneducated pop star whose simplistic “love-drugs” philosophy is as dated as his Neru jacket.

I like the Beatles, but to name the airport after Lennon, who wasn’t a very nice guy (the new…and widely acclaimed…Beatles biography which I’m currently reading says he used to go up to amputee vets and stick out his hand to shake their missing limb..and mock anyone with a handicap) and who by all accounts couldn’t get out of the town fast enough, seems a shallow PR-bid.

I believe the large house just north of what was the “link taxyway” between the old and new airport sites is also called “Speke”

Speke Hall.

My ATC Squadron, based on the old airfield was called 90 (Speke) Sqdn

Moggy

BAA have already rejected calls to change the name a couple of months ago, saying it would confuse the passengers.
They claim that there is enough named after him in the Airport and the surrounding areas.

In my opinion the fact that “joe public” may not know who he is, is a good enough reason to name it RJ Mitchell Airport. It’s about time we as a nation started remembering our great people again and educating people about said greats.
Or shall we keep cellebrating egitistical polliticians and tallentless pop stars.
This fu—-g country is going down the bog.
We could always call it GW Bush airport, we all know who that tw-t is.

Think on it.

mick

Looks like I am a bit late into this one. R.J. Mitchell must surely be well known around the city due to the sheer number of things named in honour of him – a road, a bus, a wind tunnel at the University, a bust in one of the university buildings, a memorial plaque in Woolston near the site of the Supermarine works and of course with the Spitfire mockup at the entrance to the airport.

As far as Southampton Airport’s name goes this is an interesting one. Yes a lot of people call it “Eastleigh” because this is the nearest town to the airport, however, as far as I know it was only known as “Southampton Eastleigh” from some time in the 1980s until 1994. With the new airport terminal opening in ’94 it became “Southampton International” and photographic evidence from 1981 shows it to be simply “Southampton Airport”. Prior to this it had been variously “Southampton Municipal Airport”, “HMS Raven” or “Atlantic Park” back to the early times of Aviation.

The main road running through the airport, Mitchell Way, was previously named after a US Navy officer; Lt Cdr G.C. Chevalier who had been the first CO of “Naval Air Station, Eastleigh” from 1918 to 1919.

Getting back to the concept of naming in general, I do prefer locations, although names arent too bad so long as they have an aviation collection. Think its been covered already, but Liverpool Speke was simply named after the local area. I believe the large house just north of what was the “link taxyway” between the old and new airport sites is also called “Speke”, as was the British Leyland factory that used to be situated just to the north of the present terminal site.

Which is now known as Nottingham East Midlands Airport, despite the fact it’s in Leicestershire!

Well, Nottm is bigger than Leicester and Derby and has a bigger crime rate too, so my former city deserves all the attention it requires.

East Midlands Airport was opened over 40 years ago on the site of the Castle Donnington airfield and even today people up there refer to EM as Castle Donnington, certainly my old man used to and so does my brother.

Which is now known as Nottingham East Midlands Airport, despite the fact it’s in Leicestershire!

Yeah, Mark 12, I am a proud resident of Gotham City!

Were you aware that Gotham City was named by the author of Batman after a village in Nottinghamshire that created several fables about the local inhabitants, ie ‘The 3 Wise Men of Gotham that went to sea in a sieve’ and several other tales. He used the name in order to subtly take the p### out of the local dignitaries, ie the Police chief and mayor, as well as most of the other characters in the story/films, including Batman himself.
In Notts, Gotham is pronounced ‘goatam’ and is the centre of plasterboard production in the UK, the gypsum is/was mined in the village, they used to have a fantastic little steam engine that was shedded next to the navigable River Soar and used to pull the gypsum trains out of the deep mines.
Just to keep this as an aviation thread, the place is now under the flightpath to Castle Donnington, sorry, East Midlands Airport.