by David Chapman
Staff Writer
Coinciding with its 10th anniversary in 2011, the Jacksonville Aviation Authority and its airport entities will receive a new look that officials expect will bring better awareness.
The campaign, the authority’s first formal branding and identity campaign, was introduced to the aviation authority board of directors during its monthly meeting Monday.
With the changes, each airport and the authority itself will have its own color scheme and brand under the same style logo, with three of the four airports re-named.
Cecil Field will become Cecil Airport and Herlong Airport will become Herlong Recreational Airport, while Craig Airport will become Jacksonville Executive Airport.
Jacksonville International Airport retains the name.
Steve Grossman, JAA executive director and CEO, said the changes will better educate the public about the facilities and make each more recognizable.
“This entire campaign plays into the long-term goal of being the best economic engine we can be and making sure the community knows about it,” said Grossman. “I think it’s going to pay big dividends for us in the long run.”
Other changes include the addition of a new tag line, “Going Beyond, Daily.”
The public should begin to see ads and signs of the changes over the next several months, culminating Oct. 1, the authority’s anniversary. In 2001, the Legislature split the airports from the Jacksonville Port Authority.
The campaign was created by Birmingham-based Big Communications.
The “whole spirit of this campaign was to really have a more frequent dialogue with the region,” said John Montgomery, Big Communications president.
In addition, the authority has internally revamped its website and created a new digital, integrated portal at www.flyjacksonville.com.
Officials said the new website will make it easier for the public to interact with the airports and it features schedules, live support, information about parking services and more.
The website incorporates the new logos and information. Grossman said that in-house website maintenance will save the authority about $100,000 a year.
In other news from the authority meeting:
• Grossman relayed details of the second annual airline summit held by aviation officials. It included five corporate airline schedule planners from four different services. He said such a showcase can be a determining factor when schedulers are deciding when to institute new routes.
“By having them here, they have a real image of Jacksonville and the positive aspects in mind,” he said. “It is extremely rare to get these folks out of their offices. They know they’re going to be hit on.”
Grossman said it might not be a coincidence that within two weeks of the summit, in addition to the previously announced Puerto Rico service, a new Denver-Jacksonville service was announced by Southwest Airlines to begin June 5.
• Speaking of the summit, Grossman praised Mayor John Peyton, who was scheduled to meet with the group for 15 minutes but stayed an hour and a half. “That was very impressive to the schedule planners,” said Grossman.
• Given recent media reports about airline security screening, Grossman invited Ed Goodwin, regional federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration, to speak to the board to clarify several security procedures.
The airport has three Advanced Image Technology machines and the goal is to implement more to take over the outdated technology of walk-through metal detectors. The millimeter wave machines (not X-ray) detect anomalies on the human body and if irregularities are found, he said, then the person would have just the irregular area searched. “That’s all we do,” he said. “This number is around that we are out there groping everybody. That’s not the case.” On average the searches occur less than twice a day, he said.
• The next JAA board of directors meeting will be 8:30 a.m. Dec. 28. The meeting will be on Tuesday rather than Monday because of the holidays.
On Monday, the authority also reported that passenger traffic at Jacksonville International Airport was up for the second consecutive month.
In October, the airport recorded a total of more than 483,403 passengers, up 1.3 percent from the 476,984 reported during October 2009.
In addition, the number of September passengers was up 2.85 percent over September 2009.
“The back-to-back monthly passenger gains ... are encouraging signs that the commercial aviation industry continues to show improvement,” said Grossman.
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