New Airport NOT Bigger Than Tampa’s!

Stop the presses. Tampa Tribune reporter Mike Salinero got some basic facts about our airport relocation project right. Congratulations to Mike – he may be the first out-of-market reporter to do so.

Sure, Salinero’s article had many of the same basic inaccuracies and tired storylines.

But for the first time in print, a paper other than the News Herald actually got the size of our new airport correct.

Salinero wrote:

“Although the total airport property will consist of 4,000 acres, the actual airport footprint will be 1,400 acres. It will have one runway, eight gates and a terminal building of about 105,000 square feet. By comparison, Tampa International has three runways, 59 gates and a terminal with more than a million square feet.”

See? Our new airport is not going to be “bigger than Tampa’s” – as so many biased reporters have written.

Salinero also got it right about safety concerns. He wrote:

“The 6,300-foot runway is considered too short for regular use by larger jets, and there is not enough room for adequate safety zones to stop jets that overshoot the runway, the FAA said. The airport is constrained by the waters of St. Andrews Bay and by residential neighborhoods.”

Salinero buried this important quote from Seth Young, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, at the bottom of his story:

"It's not a matter of trying to fix the old airport; it's a matter of creating a facility that can handle the growth over the next 20 years in the region," said Young, whose expertise is airport planning.

"It's not about a short-term fix; it's a long-range plan," he said. "And that's actually not costing that much local money at all. It's mostly FAA and state money."