• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 04 / 08 / 2011

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By TED JACKOVICS. The Tampa Tribune. Published: April 7, 2011. TAMPA - Gaining landing rights from Cuban officials for charter flights from Tampa International Airport remains the primary obstacle to launch service, officials said today.

No one can realistically say how long that might take, Tampa International vice president of marketing Christopher Minner told the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority board.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection in March approved Tampa as a gateway airport for charter flights serving Cuba.

Airport officials are following up with the Cuban government and Havanatur, the Cuban state tour operator, to remove remaining barriers, Minner said, and plan to visit Miami to monitor how that airport handles Cuban charters.

A handful of U.S. travel service agencies and charter carriers have expressed interests in operating Tampa-Cuba charter flights.

Minner also said the launch of AirTran Airways and JetBlue Airways Tampa-San Juan flights this month and next is pivotal to showing airlines what kind of traffic the local community can support.

"We need to recapture those who drive to Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Miami for flights," Minner said.

Damian Brooke, the airport's vice president of business planning and information technology, who along with Minner recently joined the staff from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, said Tampa handled 1.25 million passengers in February, down 2.9 percent from a year ago in part because of weather-related flight cancellations.

Brooke said Southwest Airlines, the airport's busiest carrier with 31.6 percent of the market share, carried 395,695 passengers in Tampa in February, down 0.4 percent from year-ago figures. He said Southwest officials told him the airline's morning traffic was increasing, indicating a gain in business travelers.

Source: www2.tbo.com/content/2011/apr/07/tampa-airport-still-waiting-for-cuba-approval/news-breaking/