Beaufort Co. airport needs a new image, supporters say. Could the name change?
Note: This story has been updated to clarify that Beaufort County Airport is operated and maintained using money from airport revenue.
Northern Beaufort County’s airport has a branding problem and should change its name to attract more business, an airport advisory group and other supporters say.
Beaufort County officials are considering a proposal to rename Beaufort County Airport (ARW) on Lady’s Island as Beaufort Executive Airport. The distinction would make the destination more attractive to pilots looking for places to stop along the East Coast and would encourage more high-end travelers to fly into the nearby terminal instead of Hilton Head or Savannah, said a Beaufort Aviation Association officer who is pushing for the change.
Discussion about changing the name of the airport known as Frogmore is not new. A county airport board that helps guide operations at the airports on Hilton Head and Lady’s Island even voted in late 2019 to support the new name. But the county’s top airport official wants to slow the process to consider what the new name would mean for the operation and expected service at the facility.
“It’s a good, interesting idea, but it’s not an urgent idea by any means,” Beaufort County Airports Director Jon Rembold said Friday.
Beaufort County Airport is a public airport operated and maintained with airport revenues and overseen by county staff and the advisory board. Its $630,000 budget is funded largely by fuel sales and rental fees for the aircraft that fill the 34 hangars and others tied down outside.
The staff includes a full-time manager and four part-time employees.
The airport covers about 100 acres off well-traveled Sea Island Parkway, a 3,400-foot runway extending between low-lying marshland. The facility recorded a little more than 10,000 flight operations in 2019, but that number encompasses only eight months of the year. The airport is missing totals from four months when flights couldn’t be counted while the airport’s lighting system was updated, board member Chris Butler said.
By comparison, the Hilton Head airport is welcoming a record number of passengers, with almost 100,000 during the first half of 2019 as commercial airlines continued to expand flights at the terminal. The facility also received a $10 million grant for expansion last year.
A sign at the northern Beaufort County airport identifies the terminal as Lady’s Island Airport, which is not its official name. Locals have long known the airport colloquially as Frogmore Intranational — a name synonymous enough that a logo with the name and a frog navigating a biplane graces the county’s website.
None of the monikers is ideal to raise the stature of the airport and attract more of the well-heeled travelers, such as the members of nearby Secession Golf Club, said Jim Atkins, president of the Beaufort Aviation Association.
“It’s essential to raise the perception,” Atkins said. “Calling it Frogmore doesn’t do that; calling it Lady’s Island Airport doesn’t do that; calling it Beaufort Executive Airport...is a real benefit to the economy of Beaufort.”
Rembold said a final decision on changing the name is up to county staff, with County Council receiving notice of the plan, and shouldn’t come before careful study. The Federal Aviation Administration would then sign off on the new name.
A subcommittee of the airports board has been tasked with assessing what changing the name would entail for the airport’s branding and what expectations from pilots and passengers might come with the new name.
Changing the name without considering other aspects of the branding, like logos and signage, could lead to a disjointed message, Rembold said.
The airport director has said he doesn’t oppose the new name but said if customers expect a VIP greeting, chauffeur service and other high-end amenities, county officials need to know before moving forward.
“We don’t have any of that, guys,” Rembold told the airports board in November. “So if that becomes an expectation with a new name, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
The importance of a new name would be to more accurately describe the airports location to incoming pilots, said Butler, who keeps his plane at the terminal.
The branding for the airport doesn’t matter as much as it would a normal business, Butler said, because pilots care only about which facility is most convenient while receiving the services they need.
A bigger priority is expanding hangar space at the airport, Butler said. About 50 aircraft are based permanently at the airport, including the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office and county mosquito control operations.
The hangars are full, and an airport committee is working on a ground lease that would use private investment to build more hangar space and allow for more and bigger planes, Butler said. That would, in turn, generate much-needed revenue for the airport.
The airport board will also study whether fuel prices at the airport are competitive.
Some board members seemed to favor more urgency with the new name.
Board chairman Howard Ackerman noted that fuel sales, one of the airport’s primary revenue streams, is down a little more than 15 percent during the past two years.
“I think we do no harm up front if we make the name change and continue to develop the brand we want it to be as we move forward,” Ackerman said.
This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 4:30 AM.
