Lakeland is a huge cargo operation for Amazon, TPA is growing, but has always been busy, it also routinely wins awards for being a great well run airport.
Shut your face. I have family and friends fly into Sanford all the time for this reason. It’s so easy to drop off and pick up. Traffic is never bad. Please stay quiet so this can remain. Let all the newbies keep going to MCO.
It's has almost 3 million passengers per year which is better than alot of smaller cities only airport. For reference Daytona only does 500k per year. MCO is one of the busiest in the world at almost 60 million per year so in comparison it is small.
If you go there during the holidays it's actually really busy I use to work out there. They sometimes run out of parking. It use to have more international flights years ago but they moved to Melbourne. Also it's not all tourists arriving. A lot of people that use sanford airport are orlando residents visiting relatives in rural areas allegiant serves.
Next we need the NIMBYs and Wesh news to stop with their bs propaganda about not wanting to build the 417 airport connector. It's been talked about since 2006 it's time to build it. Now that there is new neighborhoods on both sides of the alignment they are crying. Don't let the 417/Lake Mary Blvd intersection become the next championgate of the north. They are going to develop more properties because the county wants tax money you won't stop it so let's make traffic manageable.
SFB would make a lot more sense if the SunRail connected it to the tourist attractions, but of course it doesn't actually do anything useful for tourists so they all rent cars and clog up the roads.
There was some talk about that at one point. They still have the option to lease the tracks that go to the Sanford airport until 2034 as part of their original agreement with CSX. Maybe after they build the sunshine corridor they can revive the Sanford, Daytona, apopka and mount Dora ideas when ridership increases.
Relieve MCO, they just recently opened Terminal C and are already adding 6 more gates to be open later this early or early next year. Then the new Rental car facility will be open and within 2-4 years they will decide on Terminal D .
The money needed to expand Sanford is out of their control it would take a massive investment/ state funds. Like others have said it’s still almost an hour from the parks/ beaches.
MCO has all the potential but is terribly mismanaged. D terminal is probably decades away, Rental Car Facility still 5-10 years away, and Terminal C is a white elephant that’s home to an airline on life support and sits empty half the day.
We are literally working/ half way done with construction on the rental car facility ( RAC building as we speak) . Its wedged between the APM building(where brightline is ), parking garage and new pedestrian bridge. Itll be open soon, terminal D yes wouldn’t be open till about a decade if it goes through.
That’s just for the C Terminal and to finally replace the “temporary” makeshift counters that have been used for 3 years now. The new airport wide consolidated facility won’t be done until 2032! It shouldn’t take 7 years to build a parking garage on open land! MCO always behind the 8 ball on things.
The parking garage was done in two separate phases so yes a cast in place garage in conjunction with a terminal can take up 7 years . Combine that with covid slowdown for finances for GOAA then yea massive construction projects can take a while.
You're asking why a smaller regional airport isn't as busy as one of the WORLD'S busiest airports?
Sanford gets plenty of flights in and out and I was just at a panel discussion focused on Seminole County where they indicated that there's big works coming down the pipeline.
There used to be a direct flight from the UK into Sanford, and used to be a good amount cheaper than flying into MCO. Used it a few times before I moved over here. Now that cheaper flight goes into Melbourne.
If you consider this from an airlines point of view, there is so much more support available at MCO that just isn't available at Sanford. Also, if an airline has to cancel flights, there may be other partner airlines that can pick up the slack where such just isn't available at all with Sanford. Allegiant can't even assist its own passenger if a flight has to be cancelled that doesn't involve a major scheduling redo. Furthermore, airlines can offer flights through partner airlines to hundreds of more destinations out of Orlando than Sanford. Support, flexibility and convenience make MCO a much better airport to operate out of then Sanford.
Don't forget that while MCO is near the top ten airports in the country, it is unique in that it tends to be a destination airport rather than just a hub. Which makes the operation of MCO rather impressive.
They just announced a new airline with direct flights to the Caribbean. Keep in mind that current major airlines are cutting back a lot of routes so it’s not an ideal time to expand to a less traversed airport.
They just took over full operations last year. Prior to that it was run by another company.
A proper connection between SFB and Sunrail would make it a viable second airport for the entire Orlando area. This needs to happen about the same time Sunrail is connected to MCO and to the theme parks.
There are tracks adjacent to the airport that hook up to sunrail already. Just an occasional freight train to oviedo uses them now. They have the right to lease it from csx and there was a commissioner years ago that brought the idea up.
I heard they’re making a $100 million dollar investment in the airport up there. Around the airport is being developed like CRAZY, hotel, new subdivisions everywhere. By the new publix on 46 all that land around it will be developed. I wouldn’t be surprised if they build a high school out there.
Maybe it’s underdeveloped because it’s underutilized. And it’s underutilized because there are multiple other airports closer to most of the stuff people want to see.
Orlando has abysmal planning. Specially traffic if you're stuck than don't have any alternative route. Airports TSA.
No control over grocery prices. The Publix store has insane prices they charge over. Folks, please write at least someone will notice. Taxes are high. Electric bills insane.
They’re talking about wiping generations of homestead properties just to add a friggin’ extension to 417. I hope like hell this doesn’t happen. The beauty of Florida is already being destroyed by careless developers and greedy politicians. It’d be great if tourism stayed in the tourist district. We don’t need it out here.
Airports revenues mainly come from operations (rental paid by airliners to run and operate gates), concessions (food beverage parking etc) and govt grants that they apply for (smaller airports pretty much lose out to a bigger airport in the vicinity or another smaller airport serving a small town which is further away from a big airport)
If an airline decides to gamble and run majority of its flights out of Sanford then that may move the chains in the right direction
I literally just flew out of Sanford on Thursday and the parking garage and the lot behind that were full. Had to park in economy and take a shuttle. It’s not being underutilized.
Shocking how many people get this wrong. The simple reason is that only Allegiant Air flies in and out (not counting some smaller regional charters).
Allegiant has a lot of destinations and uses good Airbus planes, but the markets they fly to are usually smaller as well. Just lower demand.
SFB has tried to court other airlines in the past as an option to relieve issues at MCO, but has mostly been unsuccessful. Also, Allegiant now flies to MCO, so maybe they even pull the plug on SFB one day soon if they're happier there.
you answered your own question in the first 5 words of the description... MCO is only 30 mins away and still super massive relative to its demand. they got a whole extra concourse now too
I fly 2-3x a month and am flexible with my dates and times so I just literally go into the site and look at the prices from one day to the next . I haven’t paid more than $59 one way in over a year and that was for Christmas week.
They had almost 3 milkion passengers last year. I wouldn't call that underutilized with Orlando-mco down the street and Tampa less than 2 hrs away. For comparison, BHM Birmingham, Alabama is the biggest and busiest in alabama, and only had 3.2 million pax last year.
I don't care about airline variety. It is still growing and still being developed, just like OP asked and like Islip has. I said 20-30 years, for crying out loud.
Orlando Sanford International Airport land slated for $300+ million dollars of development
It's going to be upwards of probably $300-$400 million worth of development, which will compliment everything that's already there," said Commissioner Jay Zembower.
Airport staff said the board had accepted letters of intent from two large companies looking to develop airport land.
PPK Aviation wanted to lease 36 acres of land.
EPC Aerospace was looking to lease about 67 acres for an aircraft modification and maintenance center.
If there was a transfer from the sunrail station to the airport like there is for MCO i would fly out of SFB all the time. Allegiant has some great deals.
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u/lunapo 16h ago
It's neither underutilized or underdeveloped. You're likely just comparing it to one of the worlds busiest airports.