Atlanta council: Call our airport by its proper name

Why don't people call the world's busiest airport by its full name?

That's something that Atlanta City Council wants to know. By a unanimous 14-0 vote, the council on Monday approved a resolution that puts that task on the airport general manager's to-do list.

For the record, the airport's official name is: "Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport."

Of particular consternation, Atlanta Councilmember Felicia Moore says she's concerned people simply drop "Jackson," referring to it simply as "Hartsfield" or "Atlanta Hartsfield." The airport added "Jackson" to the airport's name in 2004, a move that resulted in the current hyphenated "Hartsfield-Jackson" portion of the title.

The name change was to honor former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, who served several terms in a run that stretched from the 1970s into the 1990s. The airport's new international terminal also bears Jackson's name. As mayor, Jackson helped kickstart a modernization of Atlanta's busy airport.

As for Hartsfield, that portion of the Atlanta airport name comes from another former Atlanta mayor. William Hartsfield served in that role from the 1930s into the 1960s and is remembered as a key figure in helping Atlanta grow into one of the nation's top aviation centers. His name has been attached to the airport since 1980.

Moore's resolution wants the airport's general manager to report back to the council by June, according to The Associated Press.

Of course, if Atlanta's council members are concerned about abbreviated names people use for the airport, then there's no telling what they might think about the variety of campy nicknames for it that have cropped up on social media.

"(T)hey must not have seen half of the Facebook check-in names," says one Today in the Sky reader via Twitter.

Indeed, social media users can find a long list of tongue-in-cheek check-in options on Facebook and others sites that poke fun at the airport's long name.