{"id":368447,"date":"2026-08-11T14:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/368447\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T14:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:58:09","slug":"st-pete-clearwater-airport-shelves-terminal-expansion-plans-for-145-million-modernization-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/368447\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Pete-Clearwater Airport shelves terminal expansion plans for $145 million modernization project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">A future terminal expansion could add four to five passenger boarding bridges and nearly double the airport\u2019s gate count from 12 to 22, supporting up to 4.5 million travelers annually.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Currently, one gate door is used to board three aircraft, a setup Sprague said creates significant operational inefficiencies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">\u201cAn ultra-low-cost carrier aircraft should be able to come in, offload, and reload in 40 minutes,\u201d Sprague said. \u201cBecause of our inefficiencies, it takes 60 to 120 minutes to turn that aircraft around.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">While Allegiant remains the airport\u2019s leading airline, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flybermudair.com\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">BermudAir<\/a> will begin offering seasonal nonstop flights to Turks and Caicos, Belize, and Anguilla in December. <\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.suncountry.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sun Country<\/a>, which is owned by Allegiant Air, also offers direct service to Minneapolis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">\u201cIn order to bring a new airline that can sustain growth, we need to modernize the terminal first,\u201d Sprague said, responding to commissioners\u2019 comments regarding efforts to attract additional airlines. \u201cWe need to fix all our inefficiencies in order for the current terminal to be much more easily accessible and customer-friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A future terminal expansion could add four to five passenger boarding bridges and nearly double the airport\u2019s gate&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-368447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}