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TIA, Pinellas Airport See Fewer January Passengers

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By TED JACKOVICS

tjackovics@tampatrib.com

Published: February 17, 2009

TAMPA - Tampa International Airport reported a 14 percent decline in passenger traffic in January compared with a year ago while St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport's passengers dropped 20 percent after a flat year in 2008.

Continued declines are expected as airlines reduce the number of seats through fewer flights or smaller aircraft to save costs, along with an overall drop in travel demand.

Tampa International reported 658,779 departing passengers in January - a month when airlines offered 13.1 fewer seats locally than a year ago, which nearly matched the rate of decline in passengers.

More of the same is planned, with Tampa International schedules showing year-over-year declines in seats of 13.4 percent in February, 13.5 percent in March and 12.3 percent in April.

"It is obvious we are going to continue to see a decline given the economy, although the Feb. 1 Super Bowl gave us a bump," airport director Louis Miller said.

Miller said the airport will revise its budget in March to account for a decrease in revenue. Some capital improvement plans have been deferred, such as postponing the new North Terminal from 2015 to 2018 or beyond, but none have been eliminated.

"We hope the president's stimulus package can help turn things around," Miller said.
Promising developments include a larger than expected gathering of about 100 travel industry officials last week, including officials from the airport, JetBlue Airways, visitors bureaus in Mexico and local economic development officials, to further promote JetBlue's Mexico service at Tampa International.

JetBlue began daily nonstop service between Tampa and Cancun in December and hopes to expand leisure and business traffic that has met expectations as the peak Mexican tourism season approaches.

At the Pinellas airport, January's ridership of 62,249 passengers suffered from the pullout in August of USA3000. The airline resumed service in December to Chicago, one of the six major cities it served from Pinellas. Although the Chicago flights will be discontinued on April 20, USA3000 plans to resume service to St. Louis and Cleveland on May 1.

Despite the airport's January's decline, director Noah Lagos said that traffic dropped just 1 percent in 2008, with Allegiant compensating for USA3000 with an increase in passengers from 375,000 to 460,000 in 2008. Allegiant now bases five jets at the Pinellas airport compared with three in 2008.

Reporter Ted Jackovics can be reached at (813) 259-7817.

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