GREENSBORO — Piedmont Triad International Airport will keep its name for at least several months as the airport authority conducts a public study on whether to make a change. Public input will be a big part of that process, members of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority said at their regular monthly meeting Tuesday. “If there are better ideas we will certainly entertain those,” said Steve Showfety, chairman of the airport board. The board voted unanimously to hire a marketing firm that will begin the process of “rebranding” the airport and find ways to invite public comment during the process. Airport Executive Director Kevin Baker said after the meeting that the authority has not set a deadline for doing the work and that the first step is requesting proposals from marketing firms. The authority said in a news release earlier this month that its vote in December to change the name of the airport to Central North Carolina International Airport was the beginning of a rebranding process and that there's room for the public to make its voice heard. After the name change was announced, local residents staged a mini-revolt, writing a spate of letters to the editor and signing nearly 6,000 names to an anti-name-change petition posted on Change.org Nicky Smith, who started that petition, told the board "this name is part of the community's DNA and your proposal to change the name of this airport has hit a sensitive nerve in the citizens you have been appointed to represent." Although the name change was set to happen Jan. 1, the airport's website and road signs retain the Piedmont Triad International Airport name. For more than 30 years, residents of the area have known their airport as PTI, but apparently that name didn't resonate with people outside the region. So the airport authority decided after months of discussion to make a big change that it believed would better describe where our airport appears on the map. Airport officials spent time talking to political, business and civic leaders about a new name that had to emphasize "Carolina" and "international." Passenger boardings at the airport grew by nearly 4 percent in 2017, to 879,198 from 847,004 in 2016. By Richard Barron Richard.Barron@greensboro.com Sourced from http://www.greensboro.com/business/local_business/airport-authority-puts-pti-name-change-on-hold/article_693ef5d3-2f2e-52f2-a9d1-ebe4d5cd1628.html