After 8-Year Courtship, Southwest Airlines Says 'I Do' to Tampa, Fla.(Originated from St. Petersburg Times, Fla.)

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, July, 1995 by Adair, Bill

TAMPA, Fla.--Jul. 16--Tampa's courtship of Southwest Airlines began in 1987 in a cramped lobby beneath the passenger terminal at Dallas Love Field. It was such a dingy place that one Southwest employee's office was a former men's bathroom that still had tile on the walls.

Ben Atkins, who was then airline recruiter for Tampa International Airport, made his pitch in the tiny lobby. Tampa made sense, he told the Southwest schedule planners, because it would give the airline a strong foothold in one of Florida's largest markets.

For eight years after that meeting, Tampa officials kept trying. TIA chief George Bean chatted with Southwest chairman Herb Kelleher during cigarette breaks at a Washington hearing. Another TIA official made a 1994 sojourn to Dallas,...

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