Better branding through music: Original airport theme songs

— -- These days TV shows, sports teams, celebrities and presidential candidates all have theme songs.

It turns out that some airports do too.

A few of these ditties are fairly new. However, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) traces its theme song to a commercial hit from the early 1970s. In 1971 country music singer Susan Raye topped the country music charts with her song L.A. International Airport, written by Leanne Scott. Here are the words to the chorus:

L.A. International Airport Where the big jet engines roar L.A. International Airport I won't see him any more.

"The original version of the song was a bit sad. Broken hearts and all that," says Nancy Castles, the director of public relations at LAX, "so for the airport's 75th anniversary in 2003 we had new, more upbeat lyrics written." Here are the words to the new chorus:

LA International AirportThe great Pacific's welcome doorLA International AirportI'll be coming back for more

The perkier version was recorded by country music singer Shirley Myers, proclaimed the "Official Song of Los Angeles International Airport," and introduced at a karaoke competition held at LAX. Throughout 2003, Southwest Airlines gave each of its arriving LAX passengers a CD of the song. Now, snippets of the song are played between announcements on the airport's traffic radio station (530 AM) www.lawa.org/lax/AiRadio530.cfm and complete recordings of the old, new, and karaoke version of the song are on the airport's website along with the lyrics.

Fly Huntsville — or just hum along

The same year that LAX was updating its theme song, the folks at Alabama's Huntsville International Airport (HSV) were commissioning theirs. The airport's snappy Fly Huntsville jingle airs on radio and TV commercials designed to market the airport to travelers who might otherwise fly out of the Nashville airport, 130 miles away, or the Birmingham, Ala., airport, less than 100 miles away.

There's no way to tell exactly how much passenger traffic is generated by a jingle, of course. But Laura Gipson, public relations manager for the Port of Huntsville, considers the airport theme song a good investment: "People sing our jingle to us…and some of our employees have it as their ring tone on their cellphones!"