Nashville Votes for a Dolly Parton Airport It Has Not Named

Nashville’s airport board voted 6-0 on Sept. 11 to start renaming the city’s international airport for Dolly Parton, without choosing a name. The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority called the result the first step in a long process, and said the three-letter code travelers already use would stay BNA.

Parton died on Aug. 25 at 80, after a short cancer fight that her family made public only after she was gone. Seventeen days later the board waived its own waiting rule, kept the old call letters, and still had no words to put on the terminal.

Friday’s 6-0 Vote Left the Airport Unnamed

The six-member board met in a special session and adopted Resolution 2026-10, directing President and CEO Doug Kreulen to start a name change in consultation with Parton’s estate. The authority’s own unanimous 6-0 renaming vote made that instruction public the same morning, then added the line that undercuts every victory lap: a final name has not yet been determined.

Fly Nashville posted “It’s official!” while the legal title on the building remained Nashville International Airport. That gap is the whole story. The board authorized a tribute. It did not pick the tribute’s wording.

It's official! The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority Board of Commissioners voted unanimously, 6 to 0, to modify our existing naming policy, marking the first step toward renaming Nashville International Airport® in honor of Dolly Parton. pic.twitter.com/e1N7oF6PBo

— Fly Nashville (@Fly_Nashville) September 11, 2026

Kreulen told the board he wants both Parton’s name and Nashville in the final title, a pattern he said matches more than 60 percent of the 140 U.S. hub airports his staff reviewed. One option on the table is Dolly Parton Nashville International Airport. The Metro Council had already asked for Dolly Parton International Airport. Neither string was adopted on Friday.

Airport leaders met Parton’s family for the first time on Wednesday, Sept. 9, and said the family supports a public honor. Kreulen framed the next year around that room, not around a new map.

I want to be sensitive to the fact that her family just lost a loved one and Tennessee just lost a loved one. I want to be respectful to her, more than anything, and do something that she’d be proud of.

Doug Kreulen, president and CEO, Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority

The Two-Year Rule Did Not Last

Policy 33-006, first adopted in 2010 and last updated in 2024, said airport property should be named for people who had made a substantial contribution to the authority or to aviation in Middle Tennessee, and who had been dead at least two years. Counted from Aug. 25, that wait would have run to Aug. 25, 2028.

The board cut the waiting period so the honor could move while grief was still fresh. Nashville’s Sept. 1 Metro Council resolution had asked for that exception, arguing that Parton’s pull on tourism and on the city’s image justified one. The authority kept the power it already had: only the airport board can name the airport.

The original discussion was set for Sept. 17. Friday’s special meeting pulled the vote forward. Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, and Mayor Freddie O’Connell, a Democrat, had already lined up behind a Parton name, which left the board arguing over process and cost more than over the person.

What the $10.34 Million Would Buy

The authority does not yet have a fresh bid for a Parton rebrand. It does have a 2025 in-house assessment, written when the General Assembly was weighing a different famous name, that put a full rename at $10.34 million. Kreulen said on Friday that he still does not know what the Parton version will cost. Board member Stuart McWhorter said the legislature is willing to cover it. The Tennessee Department of Transportation would handle interstate and road signs. Metro Nashville would not be billed.

The 2025 file assumed new signs across the 4,500-acre property, a replacement for the 40-foot BNA monument, shop goods, shuttle decals, uniforms, business cards, and the first round of edits to hundreds of contracts, leases, and government papers.

THE 2025 RENAME ESTIMATE

Those four lines add to $10.34 million. Family partnership could cut the trademark slice, and 18 months of inflation could lift the rest, but the board voted without a new number in the folder.

Passengers Will Keep Flying Into BNA

Tickets, bags, and cockpit strips will still say BNA. Airport officials said the code stays because airlines and dispatch already plan around it. The letters come from Berry Field Nashville, the original name for Col. Harry S. Berry, the Tennessee officer whose Works Progress Administration crews built the field.

Established three-letter identifiers are treated as lasting marks. A passenger could someday walk under Parton’s name and still type BNA into a booking site. That split is how most U.S. celebrity airports actually work. Louis Armstrong’s name sits on New Orleans while the code stays MSY. Muhammad Ali’s name sits on Louisville while the code stays SDF. John Wayne’s name sits on Orange County while the code stays SNA.

The rare recent break is Palm Beach, where a state law attached President Donald Trump’s name and federal records began shifting the identifier, a path Nashville is not taking. Kreulen’s brief to the board was the opposite: keep the call letters, add the person, and spend the year changing what people see from I-40.

He asked, in public, how the monument sign off the interstate has to change, and how much of the interior has to follow. Until the estate and the authority lock a title, that sign is a blank invoice.

The Campaign Started Against a Trump Airport

The fan campaign did not begin as a memorial. Nashville comedian Lydia Popovich and comedy-label owner Dan Dion opened a Change.org petition on Jan. 21, 2025, asking that the airport become Dolly Parton International Airport. Four days earlier, Rep. Todd Warner had filed House Bill 0217 to rename the same airport for President Trump. That bill died in the House Transportation Committee in March 2025, in part over the same $10.34 million problem.

Parton herself, speaking at Belmont University on Jan. 28, 2025, said she did not expect the fan version to happen. After she died, the petition she had shrugged off became the vehicle every official needed. Popovich carried a pink flash drive into Friday’s meeting with the names of more than 175,000 signers.

THE ROAD TO FRIDAY’S VOTE

1. Jan. 17, 2025: Warner files a bill to rename BNA for President Trump.
2. Jan. 21, 2025: Popovich and Dion open the Parton petition as a counter.
3. March 2025: The Trump airport bill dies in committee.
4. Aug. 25, 2026: Parton dies at 80; BNA lights its parking garages pink.
5. Aug. 28, 2026: Lee and the airport announce they intend to put her name on the field, after a Change.org banner plane circles the Capitol.
6. Sept. 1, 2026: Metro Council asks the authority to adopt Dolly Parton International Airport.
7. Sept. 9, 2026: Airport leaders sit down with the family.
8. Sept. 11, 2026: The board votes 6-0 to change policy and start the rename, still without a final name.

Lee’s August plan with Gov. Lee put the state’s weight behind a woman he called the favorite daughter of Tennessee. “From her rural mountain home in East Tennessee to global stages, Dolly carried the Volunteer Spirit with her,” he said. She was born in Sevier County, built Dollywood there, and had lived in Nashville since the 1960s. The airport being named is Music City’s. The childhood the governor cited is two hours of interstate east, in the county that already has her statue on the courthouse lawn.

Sheryl Crow, who recorded with Parton, backed the petition on an Instagram Live with Katie Couric: “Yes! I think we should.” Warner, who had tried to put Trump’s name on the same roof, pledged to file a Parton bill instead. O’Connell tied the airport to SongTeller, the hotel and museum Parton had been building with the city, and called a rename Nashville’s love letter back.

Parton’s Estate Has to Sign Off First

The honor now runs through copyright. Kreulen said the estate holds more than 600 copyrights on her name and music, and that the authority still has to strike a business arrangement before anyone orders letters. The Dollywood Foundation, which Parton set up in 1988, is in that same conversation. Billboard later described the final name as a joint call between airport leaders and the foundation.

“We’ll figure out the business arrangement that the two parties are happy with and then we’re off and running after that,” Kreulen said. Until that paper is signed, the board’s 6-0 vote is permission, not a ribbon.

Popovich wants more than a title. She has asked for an Imagination Library stop on the concourse, where children could take a book and enroll before a flight, a small version of the program that already mails books to kids from birth to age five. That ask sits outside the resolution. It is also the piece of Parton’s work that does not need a new highway sign.

Memphis needed 14 months from Frederick W. Smith’s death to a renaming ceremony. Kreulen told the board Nashville’s version will probably take at least a year to lock a name and swap the pieces around the field. The two-year rule is gone. The calendar is not.

A Pink Flash Drive and a Year of Signs

Once a title exists, the federal file opens. Name changes for public-use airports go in through the FAA airport name-change portal, with official papers that prove the new name. Charts, airline systems, maps, and websites move after that. None of that work has a Parton string to carry yet.

WHAT STILL HAS TO HAPPEN

• The words: The estate and the authority still have to agree on a title that keeps Nashville in the name.
• The federal file: A finished name has to be sent through the FAA’s airport data portal with supporting papers.
• The ground: Signs across 4,500 acres, the I-40 monument, and the 40-foot BNA marker have to be redesigned around whatever string is chosen.
• The code: BNA stays, so the new honor will sit on top of Berry Field’s letters rather than replace them.

Popovich left the meeting with the flash drive and a mixed sentence that fits the vote better than the airport’s “It’s official” post. “I’m devastated that she had to die for it to happen, but I’m absolutely thrilled that I was able to experience this and see it come to fruition,” she said. Travelers already talk as if the arrival screen will say Dolly. For a year or more, it will still say BNA, while lawyers, sign shops, and a foundation in Pigeon Forge decide which of her names goes above the door.