How the Internet has Transformed Language
(this news isn’t groundbreaking, innovative, or new by any means. It is, however, related to my love for the Internets.)
While scouring off-the-wall travel agency websites for discounted flights for a trip that my love and I are taking this fall, I couldn’t help but notice a banner for a particular airport in Iowa that has designed their elaborate marketing scheme around their strange FAA-issued airport identifier. Billboards, t-shirts, hats, and model airplanes urge you to “Fly SUX”, a campaign for the Sioux Gateway Airport, which would not have taken off (get it? ha!) without Internet shorthand and l33tsp33k.
According to the Associated Press, The airport petitioned to have the identifier changed on two separate occasions in 1998 and 2002. Offered as alternatives were the following acronyms: GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY. The City denied these alternatives and decided to take their SUX slogan back. The small airport, now bearing the SUX code as a term of endearment, has seen commercial growth since the launch of their campaign–including the addition of arrivals and departures by Northwest Airlines.
