TAMPA - As Tampa International Airport enjoys continued success expanding domestic service, local officials are focusing on recruiting carriers serving Germany, Great Britain and Mexico.
``Our No. 1 international objective is to get service to Frankfurt, Germany, and we have been discussing that with Lufthansa'' said George Elbe, Tampa International's director of air service development and international commerce.
``No. 2 is to get British Airways to expand from five flights a week to seven,'' Elbe said Thursday in reviewing recent recruiting efforts. ``And we definitely want some Mexico service.''
Tampa International official Trudy Carson is in Mexico this week seeking leads ``with any airline we can get,'' Elbe said.
Airport officials recently visited Madrid where they discussed new routes with Luft- hansa, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, AerLingus and Air France.
Condor German Airlines served Tampa as recently as 2002 but discontinued its single weekly flight to Germany rather than add more. The single flight made local overhead economically inefficient, Condor officials had said.
British Airways is the airport's mainstay European carrier but flies between Tampa and London just five times a week.
Tampa International has long struggled to expand international service in the shadow of Orlando International Airport and its tourist attraction draws with foreign visitors. Miami International Airport continues to be the prime U.S. gateway to Central American and South America for business and leisure travel.
Stiff competition among airlines eager to serve busy Florida routes benefits domestic air service growth, but generating international service requires much patience and work, Elbe said. In October, for example, Tampa International reported 642,047 arriving domestic passengers, compared with 16,319 international arrivals.
Tampa International has courted Lufthansa since 1988, when the German airline studied Tampa, Charlotte, N.C., and Seattle as prime destinations for expansion.
Once the Berlin Wall fell, Lufthansa focused its resources on East Germany, Elbe said.
``Ever since them, we have fallen off their screen, but they did all their market research so they know about Tampa,'' he said.
In addition to international recruiting, Tampa International Director Louis Miller continues to press for more domestic flights. Miller led a local contingent to Southwest Airlines headquarters last month in Dallas, where they lobbied for nonstop service to San Diego and San Francisco. Local officials also updated Southwest on Tampa International's new Airside C, where Southwest will be the major tenant when it opens in April.
Southwest has become Tampa International's No. 1 airline in a year in which the airport continues to break records for the numbers of passengers it serves.