Officials with Tampa International Airport gave members of the congressional delegation and the media a tour today of the current construction going on during Phase I of the airport’s massive Master Plan, which will continue through 2017.
The first part of the expansion kicked off last November, and will ultimately cost $953 million — funds that have already been accounted for. But there are two more phases to go through after that, and TIA CEO Joe Lopano said today that Congress needs to implement legislation that will allow his airport and others around the country to pay for infrastructure improvements.
“We cannot fall behind. We need to stay ahead. We need to provide the best service,” Lopano told reporters today after the half-hour tour of the current construction concluded. “Why shouldn’t every airport be modern, clean and up to date? Why should we have second-rate airports? Without airport infrastructure spending, we’ll become a second-rate country.”
The FAA’s current funding bill is scheduled to expire in September, and there has been speculation that the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) — a fee placed on every airline ticket that is currently capped at $4.50 — could be raised to $8.50 as part of the reauthorization.
Pinellas County U.S. Rep. David Jolly doesn’t support the fee going that high — but he’s working on legislation that would allow local aviation authority boards like Hillsborough County’s to go ahead and raise the rate independently — without interference from the feds.
“My view is how it should work is that the funds are charged by the Tampa Airport Authority,” he said. “The Tampa airport authority should retain complete control and discretion on how those dollars should be used.”
“We don’t need the federal government to tell us what size our airport should be,” added Lopano. “We can determine that through our board of directors and through our management team. So as Congressman Jolly points out, we should get the federal government out of this business, and let us determine what we need to run our own airport.”
The current $953 million airport expansion is being funded by three sources — TIA issued bonds that will be paid back by the airlines that operate out of the airport; an assessment on rental car fees that are helping to pay for the new rental car facility currently being constructed, and the rest come from passenger facility charges. Airport officials say that the PFC will be crucial for funding phases II and III of the Master Plan.
Working against the idea of raising the PFC is that of the airplane riding public, which is fed up with increasing fees from everything to suitcases carried on planes to changing flights to requesting an aisle seat. However, Jolly and Lopano emphasized today that Tampa International Airport doesn’t receive a penny from those extra fees — not that the public knows that.
Lozano says that while those fee hikes are losers with TIA passengers, surveys conducted by the US Travel Association indicate that people say they don’t mind paying a little extra to maintain or upgrade their facilities. He later added that ideally the Aviation Authority would like to raise the PFC to $6 or $7 a ticket.
“The entire community has to rally around the airport’s vision to improve infrastructure throughout Tampa Bay,” said Hillsborough County-based Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, referring to the area’s transportation issues. “What will happen if we have this state of the art airport with transit connections available but we don’t follow through and connect tourists to the beaches, or business travelers to downtown Tampa or the Westshore Business. Or up to USF. This has got to be our future challenge to build on the success here at Tampa International.”
Before taking questions from the press, a coterie of airport officials, the members of Congress, representatives from other local members of Congress and the press corps donned hardhats, gloves, reflector vests and gloves for protection as they traveled out to part of the new construction site.
