Area 51 has a new name:
Area 51, the Air Force’s infamous top secret test site and UFO landing strip in Southern Nevada, apparently has an official new name: Homey Airport. (For a fun cultural history of Area 51 and its mystique, I highly recommend Phil Patton’s great book Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51.) From the AirForceTimes (image from the Wikimedia Commons):
“Homey Airport†now appears as the official name for a certain air base near a certain dry lake bed in Nevada, according to reports in the Web site of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, as well as the Daily Aviator blog and others. New editions of flight planning software and civilian aviators’ GPS gear lists the name and the official designation “KXTA†— which online wags have speculated stands for “extraterrestrial airport.†(The “k†designation indicates only that the field is in the U.S., according to the Federal Aviation Administration.)
Capt. Jessica Martin, a spokeswoman for Nellis Air Force Base, which sits 85 miles south of Homey Airport and is responsible for the airspace and any ground facilities, said that “we already know about the designation, but it doesn’t have any effect on operations at the base.â€