While TLH fares are highest in the land; traffic has stalled
In 1994, the Tallahassee Airport celebrated a major milestone – more than 1 million passengers flew out of TLH.
In the more than 30 years since then, growth in other Florida airports has been rapid.
Palm Beach Airport passenger traffic has grown 50 percent. Ft. Myers has almost tripled. Nearby Jacksonville up 38 percent. In fact, along with Pensacola, Jacksonville was recently rated one of the fastest growing airports in America.
And another state capital airport, in Austin, Texas, opened in 1999 with 6.6 million passengers – in 2024 that number tripled to more than 21 million.
So, how about TLH in the past 30 years?
Traffic has actually dropped. That’s right, there are fewer people flying in and out of Tallahassee than there was when Lawton Chiles was governor. The Tallahassee airport had about the same number of travelers the year of The Choke at Doak (FSU’s comeback from 31-3 vs. UF) as it did in 2024.
According to the Office of Economic Vitality, while 1.06 million passengers flew in and out of TLH in 1995, that number was just 968,000 in 2024.
Those JetBlue blues
It’s not for lack of trying. Efforts to attract new carriers and new routes have led to brief interludes with JetBlue and other airlines. Various marketing campaigns have attempted to stem the tide of in-market travelers choosing to fly out of Jacksonville, Atlanta or Orlando (called “leakage” in the industry).
And there have been failed deals to develop the airport, including a much-ballyhooed $616 million deal with North American Aerospace Industries that was the subject of celebratory party and claims by Mayor John Dailey that it would be a “gamechanger” (two months before his narrow primary election win over Kristin Dozier) before it eventually fizzled.
Other improvements to the airport have been frequent and expensive:
- In 2015, more than $10 million was spent on a terminal redesign.
- In 2021, another $4.5 million was spent on improvement to the concourses.
- In 2022, an international processing facility was constructed, at a cost of $28 million, with the promise that it would create 1,600 jobs.
- In 2023, the City allocated another $1 million to airport renovations.
Oh, and about those fares
Another thing that has kept Tallahassee passenger traffic low is high fares. Presumably because of limited supply, TLH fares were recently found to be the highest in the entire U.S. The analysis found that the average fare out of TLH is a whopping $562.
One theory, in media reports, is that the willingness of Tallahassee’s political class to fly at the last minute means airlines hold fares higher.
A larger issue is the lack of competition and the lack of growth in the market, as evidenced by this recent Red Tape Florida report.
Sandbagging gets new meaning
But then there are questions of service, coordination with federal partners, communication and more.
Complaints about airport service are legendary in Tallahassee.
To wit, the week of March 22 was not a good one for TLH as multiple issues surfaced.
On March 22, passengers on an American flight to Miami spent an hour on their plane before being taken off en masse and then reboarding again less than an hour later. As one passenger posted on X, “According to our pilot, there is no maintenance crew here to sign off on the flight log.” Another asserted that the maintenance contractor lived 45 minutes away.
Red Tape Florida reached out to Airport Director David Pollard for clarification on this, but he has not responded.
That same day, an American flight to Charlotte was delayed 4 hours which meant two flights to Charlotte left at roughly the same time from two separate gates. Red Tape Florida’s Skip Foster witnessed a passenger end up trying to board the wrong Charlotte flight – after his actual flight had already left.
It was also noted that employees wearing the same work garb as baggage handlers were serving as gate agents and were boarding flights.
Then, on March 28, both TSA scanners apparently malfunctioned at the same time, resulting in hand-wanding of passengers.
This caused so many to miss their flights that, as one passenger posted on Facebook, the pilot had to order sandbags added to the plane to get the balance correct.
Thankfully, the flight arrived safely.
Always soaring: Bureaucracy
Meanwhile, even though passenger traffic isn’t growing, the airport bureaucracy is.
Just since 2010 (so, for half of the 30-year span of growth-less-ness at the airport), the airport budget has grown more than 50 percent to just under $20 million. More than $4 million of that is for salaries and overtime.
The current budget increased more than 16 percent over prior year. City of Tallahassee budget numbers are not available online for 1995.
COMING LATER THIS WEEK: Red Tape Florida offers a few suggestions for changing the game at TLH.