Fly SUX

A news report out yesterday announces that the city leaders of Sioux City, Iowa have decided to give up their attempts to change the official designation of Sioux Gateway Airport. Instead, they have opted to embrace the monicker and use it as a part of a new advertising campaign. The current designation, those three letters posted ubiquitously on luggage tags, tickets, and arrival/departure screens? S-U-X. The new advertising campaign, complete with similarly titled web page, is "FLY SUX."

I think this is a brilliant choice, and the good folks in Sioux City will rue the day they didn't come up with it sooner. This is exactly the kind of snarky marketing sure to succeed in today's smartass world. After all, the only thing the airport was known for before this was the fact that it was the ultimate destination of the doomed United Flight 232 in July, 1989, where pilots somehow tried to land a plane without any hydraulic stabilization and yet 175 of 285 people miraculously survived a fiery crash. I'm not really sure how to read the airport's monicker in that context.

But this story gets even better. Apparently, at one point the FAA offered the city five alternatives to SUX. They were: GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and--I'm not kidding--GAY. Frankly, I don't know if the town locals would have appreciated it or not, but I can guarantee you that t-shirts proclaiming "FLY GAY" would have made them very, very rich indeed.