Pilot Suing Over Airport’s Trump Rebrand: ‘Nobody Stands Up to the Guy’

The way George W. Poncy Jr. sees it, renaming Palm Beach International Airport after President Donald Trump is “insane.” And obviously so.

“Well, the guy’s a criminal,” he explains in a Friday phone interview with New Times, referring to the president’s conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. “I don’t know anything that’s named after a criminal. There’s no Lucky Luciano Bridge or Jeffrey Epstein Highway. It’s insane. It is. It’s not much more complicated than that.”

Was anyone going to do anything about it, wondered the 83-year-old pilot, Palm Beach County resident and lapsed Republican. Then he decided he would.

Last week, Poncy filed a lawsuit in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, arguing that the state has unlawfully stripped the county of its home rule authority in mandating the name change and that it creates safety risks for pilots. He named Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), the state of Florida, and the Florida Department of Transportation as defendants.

Poncy is representing himself and drafted the complaint with the assistance of three AI tools, mindful that the technology can hallucinate.

“I said, Okay, boys, let’s write a complaint,'” he recalls.

Representatives for the governor and the Department of Transportation did not respond to New Times’ request for comment on the suit filed April 10. They also have yet to file a response in court.

The “Donald J. Trump International Airport” rebrand sprang from a bill in the Florida Legislature co-sponsored by Rep. Meg Weinberger, a Republican who represents parts of Palm Beach County and described Trump as “the most consequential president of our lifetime.” DeSantis signed the legislation on March 30, not long after Trump’s business filed trademark applications for possible airport names. The applications lay claim to the name and also seek to use it for products such as slippers for going through airport security, luggage tags, hats, T-shirts and flight suits.

The Trump Organization told the New York Times it took the step “because the Trump name is the most infringed trademark in the world.”

All of those developments horrified Poncy. A Florida resident of 53 years, he’s led a colorful life, doing a stint as a rock musician who then “made his money in the medical supply business before trying his hand at writing movie scripts and novels,” as the Palm Beach Daily News put it. On the phone with New Times, he’s quick to crack a joke and often animated, saying things like, “This is the one that frosts me up.”

He lived on Seabreeze Avenue in Palm Beach for a decade but did not know his neighbor, the future president. When he heard Trump was mounting a bid for president, he recalls thinking: “That’s not possible.” Although he registered as a Republican long before Trump came along, he says he has never voted for him.

“Usually I think I voted for my brother. I wrote him in,” says Poncy, who adds that he keeps meaning to change his party affiliation. “But he lost.”

Hearing about the airport renaming in recent months, he wondered whether it was even legal. He says some research convinced him it was not, and soon he was working on his complaint. His daughter, a lawyer, looked it over for him. He paid $406 to file.

His AI helpers tell him he has a 70 to 80 percent chance of prevailing, but he knows “AI tends to like you and boost you up.”

But more to the point, Poncy says the name change isn’t as simple as putting up new signs. A licensed pilot who has owned several aircraft over the years, he says pilots rely on flight plans, charts and other tools that use the airport’s current name and call sign. The argument he lays out in the complaint is that changing it as of July like the legislation requires will “create a period of inconsistency between state-mandated designations and FAA aeronautical publications that have not yet been updated.”

“I’m not trying to make it into the world’s biggest problem,” he says. “But it’s just introducing something that you don’t need.”

And there’s this, too: “Nobody stands up to the guy, ever. And so somebody should try.”