lebron fix.jpg

Squint and you might be able to see the LEBRN navigational marker on this aeronautical map. It's east and a little north of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Air traffic controllers direct pilots along routes with the use of such named intersections in airspace, called "fixes."

(Federal Aviation Administration)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- As far as air traffic controllers and pilots are concerned, LeBron never left Cleveland.

Make that LEBRN, actually - the name of a navigational "fix," a kind of road marker in the sky for directing planes -- that in the case of Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James is exactly 4.3 nautical miles south of Burke Lakefront Airport, suspended in airspace over Slavic Village.

There it's been since LeBron's initial years with the Cavs, there it stayed after James took his talents to the Miami Heat in 2010, and there it is today, as the Cavs ready for the third game of the NBA finals in Cleveland.

Perhaps it's because LeBron's star is burning so brightly at the moment that his name popped out of the air traffic control chatter that aviation buff Craig Sanders had tuned into Saturday night.



The free-lance writer and editor from University Heights heard the controller tell the aircraft to head toward LeBron as he listened to his Radio Shack scanner. Never having heard that before, Sanders looked around online and found the LEBRN fix point in an FAA data base.

(You can see the information Sanders called up if you go to the site AIRNAV.com, click on Airspace Fixes, type LEBRN in the box and click "Get Fix Information.")

"I thought maybe it got renamed after he got back," Sanders said.

At the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, spokeswoman Tammy Jones spiked that theory. She said LEBRN has been a continuous aviation fixture in southeastern Cleveland skies since LeBron's first stint with the Cavs.

The FAA assigns five-letter codes to approach routes to airports, weather stations and air traffic control towers. Whenever new fixes are developed, local air traffic controllers have a chance to name them as long as they follow guidelines.

"Once they are assigned, they are considered permanent," Jones said.

Over the years, controllers have had considerable leeway in coming up with the codes that go out on the airwaves and on aeronautical maps.

On a blog about navigational fixes two years ago, one poster noted an "intersection over here in Cleveland that has fallen on hard times. 'LEBRN' was named after LeBron James, the superstar Cleveland Cavalier who left abruptly for the Heat in 2010 among much local angst. I have been told -- somewhat tongue in cheek -- that local controllers started pronouncing it 'Layburn' shortly after he left."

A pilot writing on the same blog described flying over Mount Airy, North Carolina, and being thrilled to see the Mayberry cast of characters immortalized there: ANTBE, OPBEH, BOMRR, OTISE, ANDEI, TALRR, FIFEE, BRNEE.

Near Pease, New Hampshire, there is a well-known sequence of waypoints ITAWT ITAWA PUDYE TTATT IDEED.

The codes are not always whimsical, though. In 2012, the FAA named two arrival sequences to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to honor those who died in the 9/11 attacks and those serving the country from that day forward.

Aircraft flying the Freedom route to National from the northwest pass through waypoints named "WEEEE," "WLLLL," "NEVVR," "FORGT" and "SEP11." Those flying the Troops route from the southwest pass through waypoints named "USAAY," "WEEDU," "SUPRT," "OOURR" and "TRUPS." Depending on the runway configuration, aircraft also might pass through waypoints named "LETZZ," "RLLLL," "VCTRY" and "HEROO."

Other codes reflect local pride (CREOL, ZYDCO in Louisiana), speak to foodies (SPICY and BARBQ near Kansas City) or come from sports fanatics (BOSOX, CUBBZ), writer Deborah Fallows said in an October 2013 story in the Atlantic.

"We have fixes all over the country named after various famous people, cartoon characters, former FAA officials and other notable words or names," agency spokeswoman Laura Brown explained in an email.

That got me thinking. Go to the FAA web site where you can sort fix codes by state. Sure enough, there it is, in celestial perpetuity: CAVVS.