Port-to-TIA bag deal posed

A system that allows debarking cruise ship passengers to check bags at the port for late-day flights is in the works.

By JEAN HELLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 14, 2000

TAMPA -- This is no way to end a vacation cruise.

You dock at the Port of Tampa before dawn, claim your bags, go through Customs and schlep your luggage aboard one of perhaps 25 buses heading for Tampa International Airport. You arrive before 9 a.m.

And then what?

For security reasons, there are no luggage lockers at the airport anymore. The airlines won't let you check your bags until two hours before your flight. And your flight doesn't leave until 6 p.m. You have nine hours to kill and nothing to do.

"You're not having a fun time now, are you?" said George Williamson, director of the Port of Tampa.

Williamson and Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, are working with the Federal Aviation Administration, the airlines, skycaps and stevedores to find a way for homeward-bound cruise passengers to check their luggage through to their airline flights while still at the Port of Tampa. They hope to have the new system up and running for the winter cruise season.

"You're rid of your bags, you have some hours to kill, and there's a trolley waiting to take you to Ybor City, or you can go to the Hogan Development (a movie/retail/restaurant complex near the port at Channelside), or the Florida Aquarium is right there," Williamson said. "We get people spending tourism dollars here, and they have a better end to their vacations than sitting in the airport staring at their luggage."

The plan would help the airport, too, where weekend mornings after the big cruise ships dock can be nightmarish.

"We have busloads and busloads and busloads of people coming to the airport," Miller said. "There can be 20 or 25 buses, each with 50 people aboard. It's a huge burden on our roadway system, the skycaps and the airlines. The initial response (to cruise-side check-in) has been very favorable. Everybody wants to make it happen."

While there are issues that need to be dealt with among the skycaps and stevedores, the most critical step is getting the FAA's approval, without which nothing happens.

"There has to be a way to ensure the security of the bags once they leave the possession of their owners at the ship," Miller said. "There has to be a system approved by the FAA for getting them from the cruise port to the airline facility at the airport."

That's not impossible, as Fort Lauderdale officials proved more than two years ago at Port Everglades, which claims to be the only port/airport partnership in the country now offering such a service.

The system at Fort Lauderdale requires passengers to set their bags outside their staterooms the night before docking. During the night, the luggage is picked up by crew members and taken to a central location for offloading.

After docking, airline representatives board and give passengers their baggage tags. The passengers then find their bags in a warehouse facility off the ship, tag them and take them to a truck belonging to their airline. The bags are driven to the airline facility at the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport.

The passengers don't see their bags again until they get home.

"We didn't have any choice but to do it," said Bill Rankin, deputy director of the Broward County Aviation Department. "In addition to our own stuff, we have 1,100 buses a year coming up from the Miami port. "That's just not a situation our airport could handle. The road system couldn't take it."

The reason for the heavy bus travel is the lower air fares available on flights to and from Fort Lauderdale.

"We have Spirit, Southwest, JetBlue," Rankin said. "People can save a lot of money if they're willing to take a 30-minute bus ride. They bus to Miami to get onto boats and bus back to get onto airplanes."

It takes, Rankin said, an average of six minutes to empty a bus of passengers without luggage, 20 minutes if there are bags beneath the bus.

"That makes a huge difference in congestion," he said. "And the passengers love it."

One who does is Lona Lee Thull of Friendly Cruises in Parker, Colo.

"It definitely makes a port more attractive," Thull said. "People will be able to get off the ship and spend the day running around the Tampa area. I've only been in one other place where you could do that, and it was wonderful. It was so uncommon, I really noticed. Tampa should definitely do it."

Like Port Everglades, Tampa doesn't really have a choice, either.

"When we only have two cruise ships coming in here, it isn't that important," Williamson said. "But in the next two years, we're going to grow to seven, with some 800,000 passengers a year. Lou isn't going to be very happy about what that does to his airport. There would be all these people in his facility without any value added because all they're doing is drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.

"And the airlines aren't going to be happy because you're going to show up at check-in with 2,600 of your closest friends and one little guy just trying to get to Jacksonville to see his mother. And what about that one little guy trying to get to Jacksonville? He's not going to be very happy either, getting caught in that crush."

Williamson says the new procedures are "no more than 90 days away," but Miller thinks it could be closer to twice that.

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