Estimated reading time 2 minutes, 28 seconds.
The Honourable Marc Garneau, Minister of Transport, has announced the renaming of Calgary International Airport to ‘YYC Calgary International Airport’. The new name is effective immediately.
YYC has been the official IATA code throughout the airport’s history and will now be enshrined permanently in its official new name: YYC Calgary International Airport.
“We branded the airport publicly as YYC in 2008 and the tremendous positive reaction of the Calgary community led us to initiate discussions with Transport Canada and Minister Garneau’s office regarding the official re-naming of the airport,” said Garth Atkinson, president and chief executive officer of the Calgary Airport Authority. “The iconic YYC brand has grown to symbolize the city we serve and businesses we support and is now used in the everyday language of Calgarians. We are very pleased that this brand has been formally incorporated into our official airport name.”
The Honourable Kent Hehr, Member of Parliament for Calgary Centre, said, “YYC has both historical and future relevance to the airport facility and has become synonymous with the wider Calgary community.”
Additionally, MLA for Calgary-Mackay-Nose Hill, Karen McPherson, noted the change had her full endorsement as “the YYC brand is now used extensively by the city of Calgary, various civic organizations and the media.”
“Calgary International Airport is an important pillar and economic driver for the city and Tourism Calgary uses YYC in its Calgary campaigns,” said Cindy Ady, president of Tourism Calgary,
“The YYC brand has infiltrated the psyche and vocabulary of everyday Calgarians, has grown along with the growth in social media and is now ubiquitous when describing Calgary,” said Mary Moran, president and CEO of Calgary Economic Development.
“YYC is now a key part of the city’s lexicon and image and is used in major civic communications such as the YYC is Open campaign after the 2013 floods,” said Adam Legge, president and CEO of the Calgary Chamber.
And from now on, every time someone is searching through a list of airports (as in the menu in a rental car booking website), they will have to scroll all the way down to “Y” to find “Calgary”. Bad. Typical marketing without knowledge of logistics mistake. I would not be surprised if they dropped the YYC from the official name in a few years, as soon as the current VP who made this decision retires.
Does anyone think that it’s a super waste of time (and I hope not any money was wasted) in officially renaming the airport to virtually the exact same name?