Airport terminal names may be headed for a hard landing

What is wrong with the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is this: It's in Minnesota. If it were anywhere else, it would be a different sort of place altogether. We are just too nice to have a proper airport.

For example, Southern hospitality aside, the airport in Atlanta is all about getting you the heck out of town. The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is within a two-hour flight of 80 percent of the U.S. population, so it averages 250,000 passengers a day ---- which equates to 2,700 aircraft arrivals and departures. They want you gone, and fast -- though not before you've spent $12 for a greasy burrito and a bottle of water.

And while they may have named their airport after the two mayors who helped bring this paragon of efficiency to life, Maynard Jackson and William Berry Hartsfield, political payback is about as sentimental as it gets when you're at the ATL.

As Minnesotans we have a completely different approach. With the 12th largest airport in the nation, given the weather we are pleased and somewhat surprised when we have visitors. We want them to have a fulfilling and rich experience as soon as they arrive. We want them to understand who we are and what we're about. So our airport has it all -- Prince Muzak, public art, wild rice soup, sports jerseys and the Minnesota State Lottery store. All we need to do is change the names of the bathrooms from "Men" and "Women" to "Lena" and "Ole," and the airport would represent our past, future and every questionable joke we know.

We even have coupons. If you think you may want to snag a free egg roll from Wok & Roll on your way to Paris, you can download a coupon for that from www.shopsatmsp.com. No other airport in the country has its own coupon book. (I think.)

Unfortunately, while you can find the heart of Minnesota in our airport, finding your gate is a little more difficult.

MSP may also be the only airport in America that has given names to its terminals. For efficiency's sake, most terminals around the world are named after letters, or numbers, or directions (such as "North" and "South"). In Minnesota, we named them after people we admire, like Charles A. Lindbergh, who spent his childhood in Little Falls. We ignore the fact that he made history flying a plane called the "Spirit of St. Louis," but celebrate him for flying 3,600 miles, from New York to Paris, in a single-seat, single-engine monoplane, proving that a grown man can fly a long way with his knees shoved up against his teeth and giving inspiration to modern airline seat designers.

We're just that kind of people.

If you had two dogs, would you call them Dog 1 and Dog 2? Of course not. Unfortunately, we are now going to have to do that with our terminals.

I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that the Metropolitan Airports Commission wants us to embrace the name change of our beloved terminals to "1" and "2." Never mind that the famed Hubert H. Humphrey was our nation's 38th vice president, two-time senator, founder of the DFL Party, and perhaps one of the wisest politicians in history. We're just going to have to refer to him as No. 2.

You've seen the signs on the highway. You can't escape it.

"It's not our fault," says Patrick Hogan, director of public affairs and information for the Metropolitan Airports Commission. "The feds made us do it."

Hogan explained that many visitors have complained about our airport. It's not simple enough for them. It's not like other airports, they whine, and so the Metropolitan Airports Commission went to the Department of Transportation and asked for new signs that would make it clear to travelers which airline was flying from what terminal. They have signs like these all over the world -- and that's the problem.

Because we named our terminals, there are too many letters. The feds won't allow us to print signs with so many letters because they would take too long to read. They would be a hazard. So we were forced to rename them "1" and "2."

Unfortunately, the entire system has now become even more confusing. Hogan's office is fielding more complaints than ever before. That's not surprising. When I entered Terminal 1, my GPS wept in several languages. Some airlines and travel agencies are neglecting to print the terminal names, even the new "1" and "2," on plane tickets. Some rental car agencies are failing to remind visitors that they can return their car to either terminal. And, although those fancy new signs do list the names of the airlines, the temporary signs that explain to the rest of us that Humphrey is No. 2 will soon be taken down. Chaos will ensue.

What can be done about this? I have two words for you: "Metric System."

When Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, "to coordinate and plan the increasing use of the metric system in the United States," we were all told that soon we would be filling our cars with liters of gas instead of gallons. The law made sense on paper -- the United States, Myanmar and Liberia were and are the only three countries in the world that do not use the metric system -- and apparently we all don't care. I just put 10 gallons of gas in my car last night.

So let's just ignore this silly sign business. We cannot embrace anything in Minnesota as being No. 2, especially our "Happy Warrior" Hubert Humphrey.

But the feds do have a point. It takes a long time to read his name while driving. So let's shorten it. Let's just call the terminals Hubie and Lucky and be done with it. Why not be the only airport in the world with a heart?

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N.M.Kelby, St. Paul, is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer.

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