PORTLAND – The antics of a cybersquatter have added a twist to the Portland International Jetport’s rivalry with Manchester Airport in New Hampshire.

“Son of a gun. I can’t believe this,” Portland transportation director Jeffrey W. Monroe hollered into the phone upon hearing that someone had created a fake jetport Web site that takes visitors to the Manchester Airport site.

People who visit the imposter site, www.portlandjetport.com, were taken to flymanchester.com on Wednesday. The actual address of the jetport’s site is www.portlandjetport.org.

Jetport officials don’t think the joke is funny, especially as Manchester Airport steadily has been siphoning business away from southern Maine. Of the 3 million passengers who flew out of Manchester last year, 11 percent were from Maine, compared to 1 percent three years ago.

“An important component of our economic development strategy is a strong airport,” Portland City Councilor Jay M. Hibbard said. “Somebody’s playing a cyberlink game with us, and it’s annoying.”

When Portland officials were told about the misleading Web address Wednesday, they immediately suspected their counterparts in the Granite State.

Manchester Airport director Kevin Dillon said his airport does not need to resort to tactics like “cybersquatting.” He said the airport, which has undertaken a multimillion-dollar expansion, relies on low fares to boost boardings.

“The airport and the services we offer speak for themselves, and we don’t need tactics like this,” Dillon said. “I want to say on the record that we would never sabotage the Portland jetport that way.”

Charles Bacall, a Portland attorney who specializes in Internet domain name disputes, said people often register several variations of a Web address to avoid such problems. For example, jetport officials could have registered both www.portlandjetport.org and www.portlandjetport.com.

“It’s not unusual for people to do that, and it’s a good idea, because cybersquatting still happens,” Bacall said.

So if Manchester Airport didn’t register www.portlandjetport.com, who did?

According to Network Solutions, the primary organization for registering domain names, the owner of the address is Curt Vainio. He was the jetport’s assistant operations manager until last month.

Vainio, who now works as the operations manager at Washington-Dulles Airport outside of Washington, D.C., did not return a phone call Wednesday.

But Vainio did call his former boss, Jeff Schultes, the jetport’s manager. Schultes said Vainio has promised to take down the site immediately. On Thursday, it had been changed to take browsers to an airport jobs site.

Schultes said Vainio told him that he registered the name because the city of Portland didn’t and that he linked to Manchester Airport’s site as a “wake-up call” to jetport officials.

“I don’t feel it was anything malicious,” Schultes said. “Was it a smart thing to do? No, it wasn’t.”

Monroe, however, was not so forgiving.

“I’d like to beat him around the ears.”