Nashville International Airport is going to carry Dolly Parton’s name. The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority board voted 6-0 on Friday to begin the process of renaming the airport after the singer, who died on August 25 at the age of 80 following a private battle with cancer.
What the board actually approved is narrower than most of the headlines suggest, and it is worth reading carefully. The authority told CBS News that a final name has not been chosen, and that it is “working closely with the appropriate parties to thoughtfully determine how Dolly Parton’s name and legacy will be incorporated.” Nashville’s CBS affiliate WTVF had reported the night before that the name would be Dolly Parton International Airport, and that all seven board members were expected to vote in favor. The vote that actually happened was 6-0, and the authority’s own language afterward was noticeably more cautious than the affiliate’s. The destination is clear enough. The wording on the terminal is not settled.
One detail is settled: the three-letter code stays. BNA stands for Berry Field Nashville, after Col. Harry S. Berry, who helped build the airport in 1939. Travelers will keep booking flights to BNA whatever the signage ends up saying.
A petition she thought was a joke
This did not start with politicians. A fan-led petition was launched more than a year before Parton died, and it had gathered over 175,000 signatures by Friday.
Parton was asked about it on CBS Mornings in January 2025, and she did not take it seriously. She said she thought the idea was “just a joke,” then added: “I’m very flattered. But it’s a nice compliment, and I appreciate it. I’ve been blessed.”
After her death the petition regained traction, and the political weight arrived quickly. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee backed the change, saying that “Dolly Parton’s extraordinary life is forever woven into the fabric of our state,” and that “at a place where Tennessee welcomes the world, it is fitting that Nashville International Airport would bear the name of our state’s favorite daughter.”
Mayor Freddie O’Connell framed it as a reply to something Parton had already given the city. “Dolly was in the process of working with us on a remarkable hotel and museum — SongTeller — that she called her love letter to Nashville,” he said. “Now it’s our turn to share a love letter to Dolly.”
The obstacles, and the bill
Two practical things stand between Friday’s vote and a new sign over the terminal.
The first is the authority’s own rulebook. Existing policy holds that airport properties can only be named for people who have been dead for at least two years. Parton died 17 days ago. The board is moving to set that rule aside, and that procedural step is what makes everything else possible — a rule written to slow this kind of decision down, suspended for the person it would otherwise have delayed until 2028.
The second is the Federal Aviation Administration, which has to approve the administrative change. WTVF reported that those involved estimate the full process — signage, paperwork and all — will take six months to a year, and that the cost will run somewhere between $8 million and $10 million, drawn from Metro, state and airport resources.
That price is the part most likely to draw an argument, so it is worth being precise about where it comes from: it is an estimate reported by WTVF, not a figure the airport authority has published. Separately, State Rep. Todd Warner has said he plans to introduce legislation to rename the airport, which would run a legislative track alongside the board’s administrative one.
If it all goes through, Nashville’s airport becomes the first international commercial airport in the United States named after a woman. American airports named for individuals are not unusual — Louis Armstrong New Orleans International, Louisville Muhammad Ali International, John Wayne Airport in Orange County — but that particular distinction has not been claimed before.
What else is happening in her name
The airport is one item on a longer list. Parton’s SongTeller Hotel and the Life of Many Colors Museum are due to open on September 29 in downtown Nashville, with hotel reservations opening September 14. The 20,000-square-foot museum takes up the hotel’s third floor and was curated under her sister Rachel Parton George and her niece Rebecca Seaver, opening with a recreation of the cabin she grew up in. Footage filmed with Parton earlier this year lets her narrate her own life to visitors — a project conceived while she was alive that now functions as something much closer to a memorial.
Earlier this week her first posthumous release arrived: “Bound to Ride,” recorded in 2022 with the First Ladies of Bluegrass, taken from a Stanley Brothers tribute album due October 16. In the state legislature, Sen. Jessie Seal has introduced a bill designating September 25 as “9 to 5” Day.
Parton spent five decades making herself impossible to memorialize modestly, and she was still adding to the pile when she died — a hotel, a museum, a record in the can. The airport is the first tribute built entirely without her, and it arrived in under three weeks. Whether that counts as a city moving fast for someone it loved or a decision made in the middle of grief is the argument Nashville will have while the paperwork goes through.
