Results so far in an online poll about whether Sofia Airport should be given a new name – preferably, that of an aviation hero from the country’s history – are that most people reject the idea.
 
The poll was launched on November 16 2009 by Bulgarian National Television (BNT), Bulgarian National Radio and mass-circulation daily 24 Chassa.
 
The airport, built in the late 1930s, is named Vrazhdebna (Враждебна) for the village it adjoins. The word translates as "hostile", and the airport’s name in linked in popular belief with the fact that the airport is frequently fogged in at some times of the year.
 
The "national patriotic action" by the media was initiated by 24 Chassa journalist Petar Punchev on the basis that it was inappropriate for people to be welcomed at an airport officially called Hostile.
 
Participants in the poll have a choice of three "aviation heroes" or of making their own suggestion for a new name.
 
The names are Assen Yordanov, the first Bulgarian to build an aircraft (and test-fly it), Tsvetan Lazarov, the first Bulgarian aircraft engineer, whose name is commemorated in the international aircraft code of Bulgarian planes, and Simeon Petrov, the first Bulgarian to qualify as a pilot and who gave air shows in Sofia in 1912, and who made headlines the same year after landing his craft safely after its engine failed in flight high above Paris.
 
However, by November 27, the results of the poll on the BNT website showed that, to the question whether the name of the airport should be changed, 57.4 per cent had voted "no", 34.5 per cent had voted "yes" and 8.2 per cent had clicked on "don’t know".
 
The number of people who have voted, and the closing date of the poll, have not been announced.
 
People canvassed in the street by BNT reporters said that the name should either be Sofia Airport or remain Vrazhdebna.

"I'm from Vrazhdebna," one man said, "I don't see anything wrong with that name".