© 2024 Public Radio Tulsa
800 South Tucker Drive
Tulsa, OK 74104
(918) 631-2577

A listener-supported service of The University of Tulsa
classical 88.7 | public radio 89.5
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Airport Officials Eye Name Change for Richard Lloyd Jones Jr. Airport

R.L. Jones Jr./Riverside Airport

Tulsa’s municipal airport may have a new name by year’s end.

Officials could propose changing Richard Lloyd Jones Junior — also known as Jones-Riverside Airport — to Tulsa Riverside Airport as early as next month. Tulsa Airports CEO Alexis Higgins said part of the push is confusion with the growing Jones Memorial Airport in Bristow, which opened a new runway this summer.

"I think it makes a lot of sense for us to look at aligning the name of the airport with the identifier code as best we can while still not losing the fact that this is Tulsa’s airport," Higgins said during an airport authority meeting last week.

Jones-Riverside Airport’s identifier code is RVS.

Mayor G.T. Bynum said if the name change happens, the Jones name should be preserved somehow, like former Mayor James Maxwell’s was when the convention center was rebranded by Cox Communications.

"We tracked down Mayor Maxwell’s family and made sure that they knew that there would still be recognition of his service somewhere on the premises. I think that would be an appropriate thing to do here if we’re going to take his name off the airport itself, to at least have some – I mean, his name’s on there for a reason," Bynum said.

Jones-Riverside Airport is home to several flight schools and more than 200 hangars. It was the nation’s 45th-busiest control tower within the past decade.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.
Related Content