Take the Tacoma out of Sea-Tac International Airport? When pigs fly

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has been in perpetual motion since that day in January 1943 when construction started at Bow Lake, roughly halfway between the two cities.

Over the years, satellite terminals were added and are now part of a $3.2 billion modernization, a $1.1 billion third runway was built after a 14-year battle royale, and passenger traffic has skyrocketed from 130,000 to 49.8 million people a year.

The one constant, as Sea-Tac has ascended to become America’s ninth-busiest airport, is the hyphenated name that bears witness to the two cities that founded it, funded it and nurtured it.

Constant, except for a six-month blip in 1984. That’s when Port of Seattle commissioners tried renaming the airport after legendary U.S. Sen. Henry M. Jackson, who’d recently died. Tacoma officials protested, and “Sea-Tac” was restored.

Now Tacoma leaders are raising their voices again, determined not to see our city bumped from the airport’s identity like an economy-class passenger on an overbooked flight to Newark.

Bully for them, we say. It might be little more than a preemptive strike, a shot across the bow to get the attention of Port of Seattle officials who are engaged in an airport branding initiative.

Whatever you want to call it, it worked — and Tacoma should keep making noise to ensure our city figures prominently in the airport’s public face for generations to come.

Alarm bells were triggered several weeks ago when the airport’s marketing gurus reached out to the 253 about the upcoming branding project. A public survey they produced left the impression that they might experiment with a different airport identifier on some materials.

The survey asked: What associations do you make when you hear the words “Seattle International”? (It put that option alongside the two traditional airport names, Seattle-Tacoma and Sea-Tac.)

A March 18 follow-up letter from the Port of Seattle Commission president and the airport’s aviation managing director suggested it was all just a big misunderstanding.

But there was enough bureaucratic gobbledygook in the letter (“we would like to underscore the purpose of the multi-faceted branding project is to develop a distinct brand promise with clear expectations for delivering an excellent customer experience at Sea-Tac Airport”) that Pierce County leaders know not to leave anything to chance.

It was gratifying to see them put on the full-court press and stand together for Sea-Tac. The letter of concern was signed by all eight Tacoma City Council members, all seven Pierce County Council members, the county executive, the mayor and the two leading local economic development chiefs.

“Sea-Tac is a brand with great history, great legs, and a great future,” they wrote.

At a time of volatile land-use planning for the Tacoma Tideflats, including an ongoing debate over a liquefied natural gas plant, any opportunity to stake out common ground shouldn’t be taken for granted.

To be clear, the airport’s legal name was never in jeopardy. The Seattle-Tacoma moniker was firmly established 70 years ago, a key part of the deal that was signed when South Sound officials pledged to raise $100,000 for an airport Seattle couldn’t quite afford to build on its own.

Emails from Seattle port officials in February affirmed that the legal name would stay intact. That’s nice but not good enough, Tacoma-area leaders responded in their March 8 letter; “more critical will be the name of the airport as it appears on signs, advertisements, clothing, collateral materials, etc., identifying the airport.”

With that, a message was clearly delivered that Tacoma, despite being on the back end of the hyphen, won’t abide being an afterthought in Sea-Tac plans going forward.

Port of Seattle officials responded with an invitation for face-to-face discussions, including “a larger dialogue around how Pierce County leaders can be engaged in supporting the development of the airport as it makes the investments necessary to serve growing regional demand.”

That sounds like an excellent, perhaps overdue, idea. Seattle should bear this in mind: If it wants to lock down future state funding for airport growth, it’ll need the Pierce County delegation on its side.

Nobody would dare forgo the Fort Worth in Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. They surely won’t strip the St. Paul from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

And as long as jets have wings, they’d darn sure better not take the Tac out of Sea-Tac.