Despite the orange alert and fewer seats, December numbers topped 2000's.
By JEAN HELLER
Published January 17, 2004
TAMPA - Tampa Bay area residents and visitors didn't let a heightened national security alert deter their holiday travel last month.
Passenger counts at Tampa International Airport in December shot up to a level that is 6 percent higher than the Christmas holidays in 2000, the year before the terrorist attacks of September 2001, which decimated air travel.
It was the second time in three months that passenger numbers at TIA climbed back above those recorded in 2000.
In October, TIA saw 1.4 percent more traffic than in the same month of 2000, the first month since the terrorist attacks that the airport bettered its pre-terrorism record. The numbers were down 3 percent in November, then shot up again in December. This despite the orange alert in effect through the holidays, and the fact that there were 5 percent fewer seats available in December 2003, than three years earlier.
"We might have done better if we had had more seats available," said Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority.
The rest of the country continued to lag behind TIA, with passenger counts for December down 6.6 percent compared to 2000.
Among the major carriers at TIA, AirTran saw its Tampa Bay area business up 46.6 percent over December 2000. America West was up 64.7 percent, British Airways up 31.5 percent, JetBlue up 145.7 percent, Midwest Express up 67.8 percent, Southwest Airlines up 30.3 percent, Spirit up 25.2 percent and United Airlines up 20.4 percent.
Continental was down 11.2 percent and US Airways was down 43.9 percent. The US Airways numbers reflected the major service cutbacks since September 2001. The airline was actually up 12.1 percent over December 2002.
Sustaining the December surge will be difficult.
"We'll be comparing January 2004, with January 2001, and that was the Super Bowl month," Miller said. "It's going to be tough to better that."
