The three letters printed on every bag tag leaving Nashville — BNA — do not stand for Nashville. They stand for Berry Field Nashville, and they have outlived the name they came from by nearly forty years.
That is worth holding onto this week, because Nashville’s airport is being asked to change its name again, and the change now has a date attached to it.
What was announced, and what wasn’t
On Friday, August 28, Governor Bill Lee and the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority announced their shared intent to name Nashville International Airport in honor of Dolly Parton, who died in Nashville on Tuesday, August 25, at 80. She was laid to rest days later in a private burial beside her late husband.
The precise wording matters, because the announcement is a beginning rather than a conclusion. The airport authority’s board meets Thursday, September 17, and it is there that both the authority’s existing naming policy and the governor’s proposal will be taken up. Doug Kreulen, the authority’s president and chief executive, is at the center of that process. Further details were promised in the weeks between…