Joe Lopano's message was clear.
"Those who said we cannot grow international flights are wrong," the executive director of Tampa International Airport told a group of reporters last month following the announcement that TIA had secured a deal with Edelweiss Air for a nonstop flight from Tampa to Zurich. "Those days of driving up I-4 are over."
The announcement was a big deal for a lot of people, but perhaps none more so than Lopano. The former executive vice president of Dallas/Fort Worth International airport, he was hired in part last year to bring more nonstop international flights to TIA — flights that could reputedly bring as much as $150 million a year to the Tampa Bay area, but had been surprisingly rare.
That's begun to change with the Swiss deal. Along with recent announcements of new flights to Puerto Rico and a new charter service to Havana, it's been a dizzying first nine months since Lopano took the TIA reins.
And if it had been up to some powerful people in Tampa, it never would have happened.
When Joe Lopano, a native New Yorker, graduated from Pace University, he was torn between photojournalism and business. He opted for the latter, and began working in the mailroom at Pan Am — in a three-piece suit. Soon enough he was working as a financial auditor for the airline and traveling the world. Later came stops at Continental and Lufthansa, before he became a jack-of-all-trades at DFW, handling all aspects of running an airline from route and cargo development to real estate, advertising and marketing.
The marketing experience is what attracted members of Hillsborough's Aviation Authority. Board members asked if he could get international flights. "Of course you can," he responded. "Why wouldn't you be able to do that?"
Perhaps because Tampa's former airline director, Louis Miller, hadn't thought it was possible. He told CL two years ago that unless more demand was shown or financial incentives were offered, airlines weren't interested in flying out of the U.S. from Tampa.
According to board member Steve Burton, Miller attributed the virtual absence of such flights to lack of involvement by the business community, which didn't have the "appetite to participate."
"That always seemed to be a copout to me," Burton says. Named to the board in the summer of 2009 by then Governor Charlie Crist, Burton began pressing immediately for a study. He says that when the board was interviewing candidates to replace Miller last year, Lopano was the only one to say that the genesis of such flights didn't depend on business support, but on hard data. That sealed the deal for him.
Burton, you might recall, was perceived as the heavy in initial reports on his interactions with Miller, who at the time had an impeccable reputation in Tampa.
Burton didn't seem to know (or care) how much Tampa venerated the airport and its director. With its efficient spoke-and-hub design, the 40-year-old structure is consistently ranked among the top two or three in the nation, and Tampa citizens take an extraordinary pride in it. With Miller in charge, the conventional wisdom was, why fix what isn't broken?
But Burton and others in the business community felt in recent years that there was something broken — that, notwithstanding all those compliments from Zagat raters and Conde Nast travelers, the airport could be doing much better for Tampa.
As D.T. Minich, the president of the Clearwater/St. Petersburg tourism bureau says, "They just weren't aggressive."
But Burton got nowhere with Miller in his first months serving on the Aviation Authority, leading to an outburst during a board meeting in which he accused the TIA director of "stiff-arming" his attempt to produce a new study. Initial press reports made Burton out to be the bully, with Miller the besieged incumbent. (Paul Catoe with Tampa Bay & Company said of Burton's move that "this has to be political.")
But soon the previously acquiescent press began hitting back at Miller harder, and negative reports about his administration began to leak. La Gaceta's Patrick Manteiga then reported that Miller had tried to get Burton thrown off the board. It didn't work, and less than three months after Burton's public outburst, Miller was gone, voluntarily leaving after a 14-year career. He would land on his feet almost immediately, taking control at one of the nation's busiest airports, Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.
Jason Busto is a Tampa businessman who butted heads with Miller on international flights, and was at one point named to a committee to study the issue. He says, "It's hard to convince someone to look at a problem anew when they are wed to their opinion," speaking of Miller.
But he is quick to praise Miller, saying his background is ideal for Atlanta, a facility that has faced building delays and ballooning construction costs. In fact, Busto lays the blame for TIA's sluggishness regarding international flights on the former Aviation Authority board, when it was chaired by Al Austin and Mayor Pam Iorio was a member.
When Burton came on the scene, Iorio criticized him and stood by Miller. Just before he stepped down, she predicted that when she left the board the new members would make Miller's life "miserable enough" that "someone weaker and perhaps more malleable will be selected." (Mayor Iorio told CL she did not want to comment for this story.)
But the frustration about the international flight issue was widespread, though rarely documented in the establishment media. Evelyn Hale de Perez-Verdia, former resident of the Hispanic Alliance of Tampa Bay, says, "When we did just minimal research, we saw that there were van companies leaving every day from Tampa to Miami International Airport for flights to Havana and Bogota." She felt the problem was twofold: people in Tampa who consider any call for change a "personal vendetta," or who underestimate their own city.
Lopano's success at attracting international flights earned him an initial honeymoon in the local press. But reports of profligate spending have turned that narrative recently.
In late August, Steve Huettel from the St. Pete Times reported that Lopano had spent $584 on a dinner with AirTran executives in Orlando in January, and $628 in May for a one-night stay in New York.
Regarding expensive meals, Lopano is unrepentant. "We're trying to recruit a $200 million airplane that can generate $150 million to our community," and says that the art of the deal is all about establishing relationships with other people. "It happens over time, and it happens in restaurants and golf courses. And they begin to like you and trust you and make a commitment to you that they will do this."
If the criticism bothers him, he doesn't show it. "The safe thing is to be a bureaucrat and sit behind a desk… I'm using the techniques that have been successful, and I hope the community will embrace the marketing techniques that are necessary to bring $150 million in economic benefit."
On that score he's got Bob Buckhorn behind him. Tampa's mayor accompanied Lopano to Panama City in May to lobby Copa airlines. He calls Lopano "the right guy at the right time," and says the TIA director's enthusiasm is contagious.
Another report that brought the authority some bad PR was about, well, its PR. Recently the Tampa Tribune reported that the agency's public affairs department, with 21 staffers already on its $1 million payroll, had hired Beth Laytham to provide "issues management consulting" services for $5,000 a month.
That was before Lopano hired former Times reporter Janet Zink to the department at $110,000 a year. That figure prompted GOP political consultant and blogger Chris Ingram to write in the Tribune that, even though he liked the former reporter, "I just don't think the aviation authority needs to pay that kind of money to do a job any mid-level PR professional could do for half as much coin."
Zink says that in fact there are 23 people in the public affairs department, but 15 of them staff the information desks at TIA. And she says that although Laytham billed the Authority approximately $13,737 for work done in July and August, her services won't be required now that Zink has been hired as chief spokesperson.
Lopano says his tenure so far has been like trying to change a tire while going 60 miles per hour, but most of the heavy lifting has now been accomplished. He recruited two of his former staffers from Dallas, including Chris Minner in marketing, who now goes out and does much of the traveling to try to acquire new business.
Lopano talks a lot about holding people accountable. In March he fired Trudy Carson, who had worked for the airport for 14 years and headed air service recruitment for the past four. In a termination letter that went public, Lopano blasted Carson for her work product, a sentiment that critics of the previous regime wholeheartedly agreed with. But when asked if he was making a statement by going so hard on her, the new airport head says that it was simply about accountability, adding that his management team is responsible for selecting their personnel, and making sure that they perform at the highest level. And there's much more on his agenda. In addition to trying to procure more direct international flights, he has domestic ambitions to fulfill as well, such as increasing flights to the West Coast. Currently, you cannot book a nonstop flight from TIA to San Francisco, Seattle or San Diego. The new director says he sees that as a "glaring hole in our system," one which discourages high-tech businesspeople from using the airport. He says he's targeting Virgin and Alaskan Airlines, who have hubs in San Francisco and Seattle, respectively, but adds, "We're targeting everybody."
Lopano says he received a note recently after having lunch with the Honorary Consulate from Germany, who said, "I really like the new winds that are blowing in Tampa." If greater numbers of national and international travelers start flying in and out of TIA, more and more people will feel the breeze.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2011.