If you booked a flight to West Palm Beach recently, you may have noticed something strange popping up on your airline’s website. The airport you thought you knew as Palm Beach International now has a new name, a new welcome sign, and soon a brand new three-letter code that spells out the initials of the sitting president.
On Thursday, July 9, 2026, the airport officially became President Donald J. Trump International Airport. That makes Trump the first sitting U.S. president to get an airport named after him while still in the White House. Here’s how it happened, what it costs, and the part almost nobody is talking about.
The switch happened before sunrise
The airport didn’t wait for a big daytime ceremony. It flipped the switch early, changing its social media handles overnight and posting that staff were “working behind the scenes” to update signage, terminal spaces, and digital platforms. By morning, a fresh welcome sign reading Donald J. Trump International Airport was up at the main entrance ramp.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the change the same day. Roughly eight million passengers pass through this airport every year, and it sits right near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, so he flies in and out of it constantly. His family does too.
Trump Force One landed first, on purpose
The first plane to touch down under the new name wasn’t a passenger jet full of vacationers. It was a Boeing 757 owned by the Trump Organization, nicknamed Trump Force One, and it arrived shortly after 5 a.m. Eric Trump was on board, and he made sure it beat everyone else to the runway.
“There’s no way in hell I was letting UPS be the first plane to land,” Eric Trump said. He also told Fox News that he flies out of the airport “nearly every day” and that nobody is more synonymous with Palm Beach than his father. He called the renaming “this incredible honor” and said no one has done more for Florida.
Why your ticket still says PBI
Here’s where it gets confusing for travelers. There are actually two different codes at play, and they didn’t change on the same day.
The FAA locational identifier, the one pilots and air traffic controllers use, switched to DJT on July 9. The ICAO identifier became KDJT that same morning. But the code passengers actually see when they book a flight, the IATA code, is still PBI. That one doesn’t officially change to DJT until August 18, 2026.
That leaves a 40-day stretch where the aviation world uses one code and your boarding pass uses another. Airlines like United and Delta started showing DJT on their booking pages, but you can still search using PBI. To keep bags and passengers from ending up in the wrong place, carriers used what one airline analyst called “hard coding” in their reservation systems. The airport itself is telling people to just keep using PBI until August.
The $5.5 million question
Changing an airport’s name isn’t as simple as swapping out a sign. New signs, new uniforms, new branding, and new printed materials all add up. The airport’s own website puts the total price tag at about $5.5 million.
So who foots the bill? The state budget signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis set aside $2.75 million for the rebrand. The rest comes out of the Department of Airports operating budget and its capital improvement program. The airport went out of its way to say no property taxes are being used and that passengers won’t see a separate fee tacked onto their tickets.
Because the whole thing is happening in stages, don’t expect a spotless makeover overnight. The airport warned travelers on Facebook that they’ll see “a combination of both our classic look and our new brand elements coexisting” in the terminal over the next several weeks. So the old and the new will sit side by side for a while.
The trademark twist buried in the paperwork
This is the part that got legal experts talking. Back in February 2026, before DeSantis even signed the bill, a private company called DTTM Operations that handles Trump’s intellectual property filed three trademark applications for the new name. They covered “DJT,” “President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” and related marks.
And the list of goods and services in those filings is long. Watches, jewelry, collectible coins, cuff links, purses, backpacks, suitcases, umbrellas, tote bags, clothing, robes, neckties, and belts all show up. So does one oddly specific item: “plastic slippers” for going through airport security to keep your feet and socks clean. The filings also list airport services like fueling, baggage check-in, shuttles, lounges, and snack bars.
Because the name is now trademarked, Palm Beach County had to sign a licensing agreement so it wouldn’t technically be violating those marks by using its own airport’s name. The Trump Organization says the president and his family won’t collect any royalty, licensing fee, or financial payment from the renaming.
But trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who reviewed the applications, pointed to a clause requiring any merchandise sold at the airport to be “purchased through approved retailers.” In plain terms, Trump’s organization can decide which companies get to make the stuff sold in the terminal. “Whoever’s making it has to be approved by Trump,” Gerben explained. A Florida State law professor noted that past presidents like Jimmy Carter sold off their private businesses before taking office, which makes this arrangement a clear break from how it used to work.
How the name change actually got approved
This didn’t come from a grassroots push by locals. The Florida Legislature passed the renaming along party lines in February 2026, and DeSantis signed it into law in March. The county board of commissioners then approved the licensing agreement in a 4-3 vote in early May after a contentious public meeting.
Not everyone was on board. Florida Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat, called it “a clear overreach” by the state Legislature. Her point was that airports usually pick up presidential names through local community decisions, not a mandate handed down from the state capital.
It’s a different path than the famous examples. JFK International in New York got Kennedy’s name about a month after his assassination in 1963. Ronald Reagan Washington National added Reagan’s name in 1998, nearly ten years after he left office. Little Rock’s airport carries the Clinton name but kept its old LIT code. This time the name and the code both changed, and it happened while the honoree is sitting in the Oval Office.
The airport isn’t the only thing getting his name
The renaming fits into a wider pattern. Since Trump began his second term, his name has landed on buildings, government programs, warships, and money. Earlier in 2026, the stretch of road running from the airport to Mar-a-Lago was renamed Donald J. Trump Boulevard.
On the very same Thursday, officials in Dandridge, Tennessee held a ceremony to rename the I-40 Bridge in East Tennessee the Donald J. Trump Bridge. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, and Rep. Tim Burchett all showed up. Bessent said “no one is more deserving” of the honor. Trump won 82% of the vote in that county in 2024.
Not every attempt has worked, though. House Republicans tried to rename Virginia’s Washington Dulles International after Trump, and that effort stalled out. For now, the Palm Beach airport is his only airport honor.
What travelers actually need to remember
If you’re flying to the area anytime soon, the practical stuff matters more than the politics. The airport is the same building, in the same spot, run by the same Palm Beach County officials. County leaders stressed that the name swap is “a branding change only.” Ownership, governance, and how the place operates all stayed exactly the same.
Keep using PBI when you book until August 18, then start using DJT. Don’t panic if you see both codes floating around during the transition. And expect the terminal to look like a work in progress for a few weeks while the old signs come down and the new ones go up.
Maybe the most honest reaction came from a departing passenger named Keegan Collett, who was surprised to see the new name at all. His take was pretty simple. “At the end of the day,” he said, “it’s just the name of an airport.”
