I’m sitting at the Aeroporto Francisco Sá Carneiro in Porto, Portugal waiting for my flight back to London. This is a really new, modern place: flat screen tvs everywhere, lots of glass and metal architecture, etc. It can’t be more than a decade old, probably less. Everything is very efficient as well.

There’s only one problem with this airport as far as I’m concerned: its name.

Carneiro was a fairly popular Portuguese politician who died in 1980. He died in a plane crash while en route from Lisbon to Porto.

That’s right, an airport named after a man who died in a plane crash while en route.

The Wikipedia entry for Carneiro mentions that the airport was named after him, “despite objections that it would be in bad taste to name an airport after someone who died in a plane crash.” Leaving the taste question aside, I think it’s a little bit unsettling for those of us passengers who worry (perhaps irrationally) about air safety.

But, as far as ironic names are concerned, I think this one takes the cake for airports. Before I found out about Carneiro, I felt that honor should go to Reagan National Airport in D.C. - honoring someone who fired the nation’s air traffic controllers - but move over DCA, as far as names go, you’ve got nothing on OPO.