Our New Name
After 18 months of our airport’s name change sitting ignored on the desks of various FAA employees, we were surprised by a set of FDC NOTAMs released on Friday, October 13 for each of our instrument approaches, like this one:
!FDC 7/2843 FNL IAP FORT COLLINS-LOVELAND MUNI, Fort Collins/Loveland, CO. VOR/DME-A, AMDT 7 ... CHART NOTE: DME REQUIRED. CHANGE AIRPORT NAME FROM FT COLLINS-LOVELAND MUNI TO NORTHERN COLORADO REGIONAL AIRPORT. THIS IS VOR-A, AMDT 7A 1710121321-PERM
Jason Licon sent out an email to each badge holder on our airport, notifying us that our name change is effective immediately. Denver Approach and Denver Center frequencies are now calling KFNL Northern Colorado Regional Airport.
I recommend using the phrase “Northern Colorado Regional Traffic” on CTAF. We’ve discussed shortening our callsign to NoCo Traffic, but this designation will be unknown to Approach, Center, and transients, so I recommend we table that for awhile until everybody gets used to our new name on the air.
Be alert out there; our airport will now have a new list of almost-correct references on CTAF in addition to the current list of almost-correct references. You may hear us called any of these (and more):
- Northern Colorado Regional
- Northern Colorado
- NoCo
- NoCo Regional
- NorCo
- NorCo Regional
- Northern Regional
- Colorado Regional
- Fort Collins Loveland
- Loveland
- Fort Collins
- Fort Love
- Longmont (yes, I’ve heard this on 122.7)
Let’s try to standardize on Northern Colorado Regional Traffic to be precisely correct and to avoid confusing our many transient pilots during this changeover. Thanks all!
UPDATE (October 16, 2017): FNL Pilots Association will be holding a round table discussion on Wednesday, October 25, at 7pm in the jetCenter hangar for our local pilot population to come to consensus on our radio call convention. If you can’t make the meeting, send your preference(s) to Steve Wolf at president@fnlpilots.org.
UPDATE 2 (October 17, 2017): FAA rescinded the NOTAMS, and promises to change our name on December 7.
UPDATE 3 (October 25, 2017): EAA Chapter 515 held a CTAF round table at their meeting last Tuesday, and FNL Pilots Association held another this evening, for our pilot population to discuss what radio call to use in the FNL pattern once FAA decides to make FNL’s name change official. The preferred choice from both groups is “NoCo Traffic“.
NOTE: For now, keep using what you’ve been using (“Fort Collins – Loveland Traffic”, “Fort Love Traffic”, and all other variants) until notified by airport staff that the name change is official. We don’t want to create any confusion by injecting yet another variant until we’re ready to standardize on the new radio call.
Once FAA starts stamping “Northern Colorado Regional Airport” on its documents (sectionals, approach charts, chart supplement, etc.) and airport staff notify us that the new airport name is in effect, EAA 515 and FNL Pilots Association ask all pilots to standardize on “NoCo Traffic” when giving position reports on 122.7.
Some have recommended “NorCo” rather than “NoCo”; if that’s what you want to use instead, it’s fine. I contend that the two will sound virtually identical over our AM radios.
If our entire pilot community, including based pilots, pilots from nearby airports, flight schools, and corporate users can standardize on “NoCo Traffic”, it’s almost a slam dunk that we can talk our Remote Tower into using “NoCo Tower” when it comes on line in a couple years. Thanks for your cooperation.
We anticipate the name change to happen on December 7, but based on recent history would not be surprised by another delay. We’ll keep you informed about when to implement this CTAF change.
