Bad Perception

I have to get something off my chest. It's been bugging me for a while and doesn't seem to be going away.

Last fall when I went back to Manitoba for Christmas I had the pleasure of going through the new passenger terminal at the airport in Winnipeg. It's nice and it's shiny and it makes sense. My beef is people keep referring to it as the new airport.

The airport is not new.

The runways are the same. The taxiways are the same. The NavAids are the same. Moist of the buildings are the same. If you are flying as a passenger you drive down the same road to get to the new terminal is the same as the old one. So, why do people keep referring to it as the new airport?

There are two possible explanations.

It may be possible most people don't understand what an airport is. Their only experience is as a passenger so they incorrectly ass opiate the passenger terminal with the totality of the airport.

It also may be possible that the recent name change to the airport has thrown them off a bit. What was once known as Stevenson Field, then became the Winnipeg International Airport, is now known as the Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport.

For whatever reason, people are confused and I don't understand why. If they had built the new passenger terminal on the other side of the maneuvering surfaces I could understand some confusion. You would have to drive a different route to get there. It would be easy to perceive it was a new airport but you don't. It's the same road in. In fact you can see the old terminal from the new terminal.

Maybe I'm being picky on this point but if they had built a new runway or updated central de-icing nobody would say there is a new airport but the new passenger terminal has made a lot of people thing there is a new airport and if that's how people perceive what a new airport is, we may not be in as good a place as we should be.