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Good news from Tampa Bay’s other airport

The downside of all that praise is that it tends to overshadow Tampa Bay’s other airport, St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport, which sits in Pinellas County on the other side of the bay at the western end of the Howard Franklin Bridge, in St. Pete.

St. Petersburg-Clearwater is no slouch when it comes to size — it sits on about 2,000 acres, is fully-certified and has three runways, including one 8,500-footer. It is also home to the most active Coast Guard station in the world.

Things were going really well for St. Petersburg-Clearwater, and the facility hosted 1.3 million passengers in 2004. But then, the airport losat its two biggest carriers, and that number has declined drastically, to about 400,000 passengers this year.

But now there’s good news for the airport. Allegiant Air, a discount airline that serves travelers mostly in the Midwest and East, has agreed to bring a number of new flights to St. Petersburg-Clearwater, starting in November. The first flights will come from Allantown, Pa., Lansing, Mich., and Rockford and Peoria, Ill. There will be more flights from other smaller cities after that.

The new Allegiant flights are expected to swell passenger numbers at the airport by about 250,000 flyers per year.

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