I’ve called the final installment of my series on geographic mistaken identities, Baltimore, DC. A couple of comments on the earlier articles referenced people making the wrong assumptions about airports. This is another instance of that phenomenon so I won’t dwell on it for long. Instead I’ll keep it short. That way I have room to mention a few other mistaken identities that came to mind as I gathered my thoughts for this series.
Washington International Airport(s)
Not everyone in the family shares my enthusiasm for geography or related oddities. One of my sisters came to town to visit several years ago. She bought tickets to the closest airport, or more accurately what she thought was the closest airport. It’s full name is the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which is quite a mouthful so lots of people shorten it down to National Airport. That’s especially true of people who lived in the area before the government renamed it for the 40th President. My sister falls into that category so National Airport would have a much more familiar ring to it.
Ronald Reagan or Thurgood Marshall?
Except apparently, if one confuses the shortened name and asks for a ticket to “Washington International”. This will lead to a flight to Baltimore, Maryland instead. The name of the airport there is Baltimore/Washington International (or officially Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport). Is it any surprise everyone shortens it to BWI?
Long-story-short, this resulted in a multi-hour traffic nightmare to retrieve said loved one from the airport rather than a much more reasonable ten minute dash. We still had a nice visit, though.
Dulles/Dallas?
I have one other instance of airport confusion which I can’t confirm in person so it might be one of those Internet things. Apparently passengers kept confusing Dulles Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC with the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport in Texas. People supposedly would ask for a ticket to Dulles and get sent to Dallas instead, especially if they were purchasing a ticket by phone and had an accent. According to the legend, that’s why officials now call it Washington Dulles Airport. True or not? Who knows?
Mistaken Identity in West Virginia
I bet many of you thought I’d mention the similarity between Charleston, West Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina. That’s a common error but no, that’s not what I’m going to talk about.
It still involves Charleston, West Virginia but you’d probably have to be a local to guess that the confusion relates to Charles Town, West Virginia. Charles Town sits within the eastern panhandle of the state in the only corner legitimately considered Almost Heaven with any degree of geographic accuracy.
This would probably have been around 1995 or so, back when the Lollapalooza music festival toured around North America. It used to make an annual stop at the Charles Town Racetrack.
Charles Town is fairly convenient to the Washington, DC area. In fact urban planners consider this an exurb at the extreme edge of the official metropolitan area. People commute into the city from here daily if that gives you a decent indication of distance. Charleston, however, is not. It’s more like a six hour, 370 mile drive from Washington.
This was back during my days as a cubicle dweller. A coworker in the next cube over had a teenage daughter who planned to attend Lollapalooza along with a carload of her dingbat friends one fine day, an event I never considered attending because I had a job and needed the money and couldn’t afford to take a whole day off for something so self-indulgent, not that I was jealous or resentful or anything like that, right?
All I’ll say is that it was quite amusing to overhear my coworker on the phone with his daughter throughout the day as the geographically-challenged teens who never thought to bring a map attempted to navigate their way to the correct location after a multi-hour detour.
New Mexico, old Mexico, it doesn’t matter. You’re not getting tickets.
My final example traces back to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. I remembered hearing about this a long time ago but I wasn’t sure whether it was an urban legend or not. Google actually confirms that there was press coverage at the time so I guess there’s a chance it’s genuine, although it certainly feels fake:
“Wade Miller of Santa Fe, N.M., recently called the Summer Olympics ticket office in Atlanta to inquire about volleyball tickets. Miller, 31, was assured that volleyball tickets were available. Then the ticket agent asked for his address and zip code. ‘She put me on hold, then came back and said she couldn’t sell tickets to someone who lives outside the United States,’ Miller said. ‘She said I needed to call my own national committee’.”
That’s probably one reason why New Mexico license plates say (said?) “New Mexico, USA” on them.
Mistaken Identity Articles
Call the Inspectors
Invasion of a Maryland Beach Town
Baltimore, DC
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