Talk:Baltimore/Washington International Airport

Major Haven for low cost
Changed the statement, as it was not the only place for low cost carriers in the region prior to Indy Air, Airtran served both Dulles and National, as well jetBlue was a player at Dulles before ACA changed to IndyAir. Also the airpor serves the Baltimore - Washigton Area, not just the Washington area. --Boothy443 08:22, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Name Change
BWI does not switch over to the new name until October 1, 2005, according to the provisions of the bill that has been passed by the General Assembly. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 21:55, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Does anyone have a link to the text of the bill that passed? The name "Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport" doesn't seem to make much sense -- shouldn't it be "Baltimore/Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport"?  Not that I doubt the MD legislature would use such an odd name -- I guess moving Marshall's name after the "Baltimore/Washington" part was a last-minute compromise to ensure the airport stayed branded as a Washington-area airport.  Also, at least one source  says the name change goes into effect July 1. --Jfruh 22:24, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I downloaded the bill from the GA's website. It's in a pdf fromat, House Bill 189. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 22:33, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Interestingly, throughout the law (which I suppose is official a source as any), the name is rendered Baltimore-Washington International; on the airport's Website, it's Baltimore/Washington. Sigh.  --Jfruh 03:17, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * This way the new name still contains the B-W-I which is commonly used, and the airport is international know by the BWI codename.

Njbob (talk) 07:29, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Bus Service
Have a citation for the bus service listed from BWI to DCA? Esorlem 02:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Citing Through Service
OK, what is the proper way to cite through service? Someone edited the upcoming North American Airlines service from BWI to Accra via Banjul, to remove the "via" so it looks like BWI will soon have non-stop service to both. But the reality is BWI will have a flight to Accra, with a stop-over in Banjul. I put added the entry the way I did, by saying "via," because that is how all the press releases mentioned it--it is being marketed as service to Accra, not Banjul, but there will be a layover. Is it not correct the way I cited it, as "via?" Or should I leave off Accra, since it's not *really* a non-stop destination? If that's the case then we need to remove some "non-stops" from, say, IAD--like service to Johannesburg, since that flight stops in Dakar for a crew change and refuling (though it's unlikely many buy a ticket for the layover stop and most people know it as the "flight to Jo'burg"). Free-world 13:46, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know the answer myself, but I think the folks over at WikiProject_Airports would be good people to ask. --Jfruh (talk) 19:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Though i would queery the project, my thought on the matter would be to keep it a via. I would have no problem with flights that make a stop at another airport, as long as in normal operations thsi is not a change of equipment nore a chamnge in flight number, which i dont think is the case at all for this service. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 07:52, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, feel free to join the fray. There are people there who think they know the answer, but it seems to me if I have to ask the question in the first place, then it's the wrong answer. Free-world 02:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Which is one of the reasons i dont like projects, with some exceptions, they are rarely helpful. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 04:53, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well you can see the Project's solution was to come here and make our heading conform to the standard: it's not "Airlines and nonstops," it's "Terminals and Destinations," and should include direct routes. I am making the argument that we need to list just non-stops, except for extraordinary situations, like long-haul international flights, and then they should be marked with a "via." Free-world 14:07, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, with Baltimore in particular, because it's a Southwest hub, there are plenty of SW domestic flights that stop at one or two cities, with passengers getting on and off, but retain the same flight number. In fact, I think on destination signs at the airport, they're generally signed as "Kanas City/Las Vegas" or what have you.  The other airlines do it too -- my wife is flying to Seattle this summer for business on American and just found out that she'll be going via Dallas, but the flight number and plane will stay the same.  Just to complicate things further. :) --Jfruh (talk) 14:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

St stands for Saint
Someone moved St. Louis in the alphabetized list from before Salt Lake to after San Diego, apparently unaware that most alphabetizing rules say to treat abbreviations as if they were spelled out. I moved it back, with an edit comment explaining this. Someone moved it *again,* ignoring my comment. So I solved the problem by spelling out Saint. Admittedly this is not how the city is normally known, but at least it stopped people from thinking St. came after San, and, again, I explained this in my edit comment.

Now someone has re-abbreviated Saint, ignoring the reason I did it in the first place. I'm sure it's only a matter of a day or two before someone "helpfully" decides it's in the wrong place before Salt Lake City and moves it to after San Diego, again. This is such an incredibly ticky-tack thing, but it seems ridiculous that folks come on here to "help" without bothering to look at the edit history first and see the explanations for why things were done the way they were--like when I reverted an edit showing Dallas Love Field as a n/s destination, explaining that that was not true; a day later someone added it right back in.

GRRR. Maybe bloviating about it on the Talk board will get people's attention. Can we agree that St. stands for Saint and should come before Salt? --Free-world 19:21, 22 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If it keeps happening you could add a comment to the source before St. Louis. Not that there's any guarantee they'll even read THAT, but still... just a thought. Randhuck (talk) 15:35, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Parking Links
Is there any value in those links to off-site parking reservation sites? It smacks of advertising. In fact I thought at one point someone had reverted them, but there they are again, and not even formatted correctly. Should we clean them up or just trash them? --Free-world 15:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Palm Beach or West Palm Beach?
I added the note some time ago about new AirTran service to West Palm Beach, and called it such, because that's what AirTran called it in their press release. But I just changed it to say Palm Beach, because, according to Wikipedia, that's the name of the airport. It just happens to be near the town of West Palm Beach. However, I notice that Southwest has PBI as a destination from BWI also, and there it's labeled as West Palm Beach. Which is the preferred? (No doubt this has been argued about for 40,000 words on the project page like Reykjavik/Keflavik but the thought of looking over there is giving me a headache.) --Free-world 01:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 15:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Runway 22
I remember reading somewhere that runway 4/22 had been permanently closed. Has anyone else heard anything of the like? —Preceding unsigned comment added by SThump (talk • contribs) 00:04, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

BWI is very much a washington-area airport
I just restored Wikiproject DC to this page. BWI isn't in the district, but neither is Dulles, and Dulles is within the scope of this project. BWI is very much used as an airport by people living in the Washington area. It's almost as close to the White House as Dulles (31 miles vs. 27) and for much or NW and NE DC it's actually closer -- plus it has a direct rail transit connection to the District, and Dulles doesn't. --Jfruh (talk) 16:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * that`s why it`s called Baltimore/Washington international..plenty of people flying into Washington use it as it is about an hour`s drive into Washington from there..it is however in suburban Baltimore..inside the Baltimore beltway and if you buy a ticket from there it will say Baltimore on the ticket..as far as the pilots are concerned it is the baltimore airport..national/reagon..whatever you want to call it is in suburban Washington..dulles in the Washington countryside Lonepilgrim007 (talk) 02:33, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
 * At the risk of violating WP:NOTFORUM, last time I checked BWI is bounded by I-695, I-97, MD-100, and MD-295, which makes it outside of the Baltimore Beltway, unless you're referring to another roadway. " My master, Annatar the Great, bids thee welcome! " 02:35, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Focus City
Isn't BWI a Focus City for Southwest Airlines. If you check their Wikipedia site, BWI is listed as a focus city. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.79.245.94 (talk) 23:04, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is but it is NOT a hub. Don't add it to the "hub for" section of the infobox. The airline don't use "hubs". Snoozlepet (talk) 23:00, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

IATA code change
I removed a sentence from the History section about the 1982 change of the IATA code from BAL to BWI. This sentence has been wearing a "citation needed" tag since October 2009. Folklore1 (talk) 16:28, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I also removed: "The more recent renaming has not resulted in a change...", which has worn a "citation needed" tag since October 2009. Folklore1 (talk) 15:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Citations needed
As there have been several citations added to this article since October 2009, I have removed the two refimprove tags. At this point, I think it would be more helpful to have "Citation needed" tags applied to specific locations where you feel references are needed. Folklore1 (talk) 16:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Destination Chart
Can someone please fix the destination chart? It looks all screwy. Thanks!--Scjiwillbe (talk) 03:45, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Page protection
Due to an edit war over the end date of Southwest Airlines flights, I have fully protected the article from editing. Please discuss the date and the sources here, rather then engaing in an edit war. Thanks. Yunshui 雲&zwj;水 07:35, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

2011 Passsenger Count
Why are "preliminary" numbers being used for BWI's notation of being the busiest airport in the Washington-Baltimore area? In addition, reference 7 is labeled as "The page you requested could not be found" within FAA's website. http://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/passenger_allcargo_stats/passenger/media/prelim_cy11_primary_enplanements.pdf Shakbok (talk) 17:47, 15 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I've replaced the reference to the FAA's preliminary data with a reference to a more recent report, which is not labeled "preliminary". Folklore1 (talk) 17:58, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved to Baltimore–Washington International Airport Mike Cline (talk) 18:31, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport → Baltimore–Washington International Airport – The official long name appears in sources (books) at about 1/20 the frequency of the short name; WP:COMMONNAME would seem to have strong application here. The slash is a logo styling that clarifies that the hyphen in the official name is really to be interpreted as a connection between equals, not Baltimore modifying Washington, so in WP style the en dash would be used, as in Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area and as in various general-audience publications that refer to the airport including Fodor's, Frommer's, and Insider's Guide. Dicklyon (talk) 18:33, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment. Could you provide a link for your findings The official long name appears in sources (books) at about 1/20 the frequency of the short name as a crude google search supports the longer name as more common. Thanks. Zarcadia (talk) 18:57, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Good point. When I say "sources" I mean books, since "crude google search" is often too dominated by wiki mirrors and other junk to assess such things.  Here I'm now seeing "about 1790" versus "about 22,600", so more like 1:11.  Dicklyon (talk) 19:12, 10 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Support, as per stats above suggesting that the shorter version is the WP:COMMONNAME. Zarcadia (talk) 21:37, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - Airports have been popular targets of political/honorary namings, but I don't see why we should ignore them. Given that a huge, huge number of airports have similar names (Ronald Reagan Washington National, Mineta San Jose, etc.) I think this ought to be a broader discussion about all airport article names, otherwise we will wind up with substantial inconsistency and potential bias - why strip Thurgood Marshall from BWI but not Ronald Reagan from Washington National, for instance? polarscribe (talk) 19:19, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not suggesting that the official names be ignored, just that the article title be the common name, which is what we usually do. Yes, airports are mixed on this, but few have such long awkward names, combining several generations of promotional fluffery into one long name.  Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is at least a bit shorter; and Mineta San Jose International Airport and Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport are redirects to San Jose International Airport,  which is what those of us who live near it call it.  I think a wider discussion is a good idea, but I've had very little luck trying to stir up discussion of other airport naming issues (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Airports, Wikipedia_talk:MOS for most recent attempt; also this mostly ignored still-open RM: Talk:Charles_de_Gaulle_Airport).  Proceeding incrementally toward consistency with WP:TITLE and WP:MOS seems to work best, especially when things are so mixed.  If there were a consistent airport naming convention in place, that would be different.   Dicklyon (talk) 20:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That's reasonable. I don't see any reason to oppose. polarscribe (talk) 21:09, 10 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Support - per WP:COMMONNAME. polarscribe (talk) 22:27, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Support its commonly called Baltimore-Washington not the full name.   Hot Stop     (Edits)   05:02, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Support, per Dicklyon's well-reasoned argument. Powers T 18:38, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This would double the length of the lead sentence, which would need to say Baltimore-Washington International (Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport). Note that the correct punctuation is of course a hyphen, not an endash. The common name of the airport, of course, though, is "BWI", with 656,000 google book hits, 28 times as many as the proposed Baltimore-Washington International. Apteva (talk) 06:49, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The lead sentence would not need to change. Just as Barack Obama says "Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current ...", we can use the current lead sentence without modification (or just modifying the slash to a dash) even if the title changes.  We can trust the reader to understand the correlation between the article title and the bolded term in the lead.  Powers T 22:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The point is that if the article is moved, the only title that it would be moved to is BWI, and everyone knows that is not going to happen, so supporting a move is not logical. Apteva (talk) 23:16, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Nonsense – all of the first page of books hits for BWI are about the British West Indies, not the airport. Dicklyon (talk) 02:56, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Most of those are not BWI, but are B.W.I., which does redirect to British West Indies. There is no reason to not redirect BWI to the airport. One is to BWI, a proteinase inhibitor from Buckwheat seeds, one is BWI airport, one is Booker Washington Institute of Liberia, and one is BW, a comics publisher. The dis page is being discussed separately at Talk:BWI Apteva (talk) 22:26, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Support per Dicklyon's reasons. PaleAqua (talk) 01:44, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Here is the problem with that. It is not a reason at all. BWI is the most commonly used name, and removing Thurgood Marshall is a disservice to the recognition that it deserves. Most people get to articles using links, such as from google, or from a link in another article. I got here this time by typing in bwi, which, by the way, should redirect directly here. This moving around airports to inappropriate names is ridiculous. Please, let the wikiproject aviation/airport members figure out what to call them, instead of moving them around on them. Apteva (talk) 08:00, 17 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

External links modified
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Why no Accidents & Incidents section?
Why is there no Accidents & Incidents section? Was it removed by consensus? Researching N139WA.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 17:14, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

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Jet service in 1950
The article asserts that at the time of the airport's dedication in 1950, "it had the only commercial jet service in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area." This precedes commercial jet service (at least in the U.S.) by several years. I'm not even sure there were turboprop routes in 1950 but, if so, then the statement needs clarification. It cites a source but it's behind a paywall, so I'm unable to verify that it supports the statement (or offers further clarification). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 18:11, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 15 June 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved  buidhe 04:12, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Baltimore–Washington International Airport → Baltimore/Washington International Airport – Per WP:COMMONNAME, the facility is generally labeled as Baltimore/Washington International Airport with a slash instead of an en dash. Signage, the airport's logo and even the lede in the article reflects this. In addition, the en dash is also hard to type. ɴᴋᴏɴ21 ❯❯❯  talk  01:59, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. Also support replacing the dash with a hyphen. The argument made in the previous 2012 RM "the hyphen in the official name is really to be interpreted as a connection between equals, not Baltimore modifying Washington, so in WP style the en dash would be used" is wrong. This is not a connection between the equals "Baltimore" and "Washington International Airport"; this is not about the joining of two distinct and separate airports. Per MOS:DASH, Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities, e.g. Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people. Baltimore-Washington International Airport, a single airport named after two cities. So we really need to move off the current title, but I'm ambivalent over whether we replace the en dash with a slash or a hyphen. MOS:TM might lean towards favoring the hyphen, but the guidance to "avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words or letters" doesn't address the issue of whether a slash is a substitute for a hyphen. On the other hand the guidance "do not "correct" the spelling, punctuation, diacritics, or grammar of trademarks to be different from anything found in reliable sources" would favor using the slash. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

COVID 19 suspensions
Please refer to the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Airports before noting any suspensions on this page. This has been discussed and it is agreed that such suspensions are not to be mentioned. Rzxz0839 (talk) 04:53, 13 July 2020 (UTC)