Avram Iancu’s Airport

Breaking news: The Airport in Cluj will be called the Avram Iancu Cluj Napoca International Airport.

Avram Iancu would not have dreamed that his name would become the subject of airport naming / branding of regional and national importance, subject to the negotiations of political parties. Maybe he would have even felt proud – who wouldn’t want to be the one an airport is named after!? – but after thinking more deeply and reasonably, I think he would have thought of something else, something more practical. For example, all the Vienna Airport branding is built around the name VIE, easy to remember and to introduce in flight search databases; Bratislava operates under the acronym BTS AERO; Munich is just a simple M; Charles de Gaulle is EASY CDG and so on.

But even this is not as important, the “leaders” of Romania tend to negotiate everything on a political basis. I haven’t heard anyone say anything like: it’s none of our business, we don’t know anything about this, let’s ask someone who does.

At this moment the visual identity of the Airport looks something like this:

If we were to think about it in the same terms as we have done so far, I imagine that everything will remain the same – we have a tradition after all, don’t we!? – and the name of Avram Iancu will appear somewhere there, next to the coat of arms of the Cluj County Council. Negotiated and politically initialled.