You can't tell it from the Epinions category, but the airport in Atlanta was recently renamed. After the death last June of former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, his friends, family and supporters have been calling for the airport to be renamed in his honor, which -- eventually -- it was. (Ironically, the collapse that led to Jackson’s death occurred in the recently-renamed Reagan National Airport in Washington.)

The airport is currently known as Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, with the first part after former Atlanta mayor William Hartsfield. Jackson supporters initially demanded that Hartsfield’s name be stricken from the airport, rebuffing suggestions that Jackson be honored in the naming of the new international terminal at the airport, or in some other city building. However, a compromise – brokered, apparently, by current Mayor Shirley Franklin – caused the airport to be renamed “Hartsfield-Jackson”.

Both men have a good claim to naming rights at the Atlanta airport. Mayor Hartsfield was Atlanta’s longest-serving mayor, and was a major booster of aviation as economic development for Atlanta and North Georgia. Hartsfield’s vision has been more than fully realized; the Atlanta airport pumps more than $16 billion into the region. But the airport was constructed and completed under Jackson’s tenure, which allowed Jackson to direct much of the contracts to African-American-owned businesses, helping to build a prosperous black middle class in Atlanta.

However, none of this helps answer the real question: why would anyone want his name on the Atlanta airport, anyway?

At this time, the new name is inconspicuous, almost invisible in the airport itself. The airport exit off I-85 is modestly named “Atlanta Airport”. The term “Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport” appears in very small letters on a highway sign right past the exit, and practically nowhere else. The large sign on the roof of the parking garage leading to the airport says “Terminal” and nothing else. The only other indication for the weary business traveler that the Atlanta airport is named for former Mayor Hartsfield is a large relief bust on a plaque just outside the security checkpoint area – that is to say, right by the biggest bottleneck in the airport, where travelers put their shoes back on and stuff their laptops back in their cases. Not a spot for placid contemplation. Not to mention that the Hartsfield plaque is right next to a large silver plaque announcing that the airport was completed under Maynard Jackson’s administration, all but prefiguring the proposed name change.

There are reasons for this modesty. Atlanta’s gargantuan airport isn’t really anything that anyone would want to hang his hat on, or his name for that matter. The security bottleneck is one thing – although it is much more of an issue for Atlanta residents like me than for those of you who just change planes at Hartsfield-Jackson. There is one security checkpoint for the six terminals at Hartsfield-Jackson, and it is usually just as congested as Atlanta traffic. The Transportation Security Agency has done a fair job in the last year of speeding things up, at least in terms of having adequate personnel, but the delays are still frustrating. This has, in my experience, less to do with the security process itself and more to do with people being utterly unfamiliar with how it works – such as the couple ahead of me in line last week who tried to put their Chihuahuas through the X-ray machine – but it’s still a hassle, nonetheless. (The traveling audience may be getting more used to the security procedure; at least the TSA people aren’t acting quite so much like exasperated kindergarten teachers as they have been.) The TSA is installing new lanes, and new screening equipment, but it isn't enough -- especially on a Monday morning.

You go from the security checkpoint (taking the time to shove your laptop back into your case and put your shoes back on, of course) and go down one of the endless Hartsfield-Jackson escalators to the train station. The train system at Hartsfield-Jackson is one of the few things that actually works, and works astonishingly well. The Hartsfield website claims that the trains can move 128,000 people per hour – or about three times as many Braves fans as attend a playoff game at Turner Field – and I’m quite willing to believe it. The five concourses at Hartsfield-Jackson are an eternity away from the terminal and from each other; walking to your gate simply isn’t an option. You’d have to be Michael Johnson to get from the terminal to Concourse E on foot without missing your plane. But the train comes around every two minutes, like clockwork, carries you right to your concourse, and there you are! Take the escalator up to the concourse, find your gate, what could be easier?

It’s the concourses, though, that most people see, and that are easily the worst thing about Hartsfield-Jackson. The concourses are all more-or-less identical, hugely long and narrow rooms that stretch to the left and right from the central spine of the railway like giant ribs. You want your gate to be either in the high teens or the low twenties. A gate number like A2 or C32 means that you have a long trudge out to the remote end of the concourse. And it’s a dangerous trudge, too; the people walking the other way are just getting off a long flight, usually hurrying to make their connection, and consequently are not watching where they’re going. You’ve got to keep moving; if you stop even for a second somebody’s likely to run you over, whether it’s the hard-charging Delta stewardess battling a gate change, the surly airport employee driving the oversize golf cart, or just the ordinary everyday business traveler chatting obliviously on his or her cell phone.

In most airports, the concourses are wide enough to allow the installation of conveyor belts to let passengers ride to their gates. But the concourses at Hartsfield-Jackson aren’t quite wide enough for this to be an option, especially given the foot traffic and the ubiquitous carts. (Hartsfield-Jackson does have the conveyor belts between the concourses, but hardly anyone uses them because the train system is much more convenient.) The only way to get to your gate is to hike there, and that means that you have to deal with the mass of people coming the other way, more than ready to walk right over you in order to make their connection.

It also doesn’t help that the concourses are so ugly. The ceilings are oppressively low. The carpets are worn and tattered. There aren’t nearly enough seats at each gate. Worse yet, there’s a sense of sameness everywhere, as though the five concourses were purchased at the same factory outlet of Airports-For-Less. If you’re not familiar with the layout – and most of the people changing planes don’t seem to be – the overall effect must be like wandering through one of those psych-class rat mazes, over and over again, except with a Starbucks every few feet or so.

Worse – and I think most damning – is that while you’re in Hartsfield-Jackson, there’s almost no clue that you’re in Atlanta, or Georgia, or even in the South. The same sort of generic creeping homogeneity and sameness that you find elsewhere in America, here and there, is present everywhere in Hartsfield. Outside of the presence of the city’s three major industries – Delta flights, CNN Airport News, Coca-Cola for sale at every kiosk – you’d never know you were in Atlanta. This is true of a lot of airports, but even at sterile outposts like Dallas-Fort Worth, you can get decent Dickey's barbecue and buy every kind of Dallas Cowboys merchandise known to man.

(The lone exception is Paschal’s, which is the last remaining outpost of a once-famous restaurant in Atlanta which was a favorite of the city’s civil-rights establishment. There’s a Paschal’s over by the security checkpoint, and another in the Concourse A food court, and you should go there. Even a humble breakfast item like a sausage biscuit is a thing of wonder and beauty; biscuits and sausage gravy with a side of grits or home fries is in the best tradition of the South.)

I live in Atlanta, and spend a great deal of time at Hartsfield-Jackson -- more time than I want to spend, actually, given routine flight delays and whatnot. I ought not to complain; I get the advantage of quick, cheap, direct flights to wherever I need to go to do my job. Sometimes when I’m flying, my neighbors express mild surprise that I live in Atlanta; there’s a presumption that everyone in the Atlanta airport is changing planes from somewhere else. “The great thing about living in Atlanta,” I tell these people, “is that you never have to change planes in Atlanta.” To the extent that Hartsfield-Jackson helps me do my job, it’s a fabulous place, minor inconveniences set aside.

I can’t help but think, though, that naming the Atlanta airport after any one individual is perhaps the wrong way to go. Instead, let’s honor past Atlanta mayors some other way, and name the airport after those who use it. Let’s call it Atlanta Business Traveler’s Airport and leave it at that. There can be little doubt that we have earned the distinction.

Curtis D. Edmonds is a Delta Silver Medallion passenger.

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