When Joe Lopano looked out across Tampa International Airport’s main terminal in January 2011, the brand new chief executive wasn’t impressed.
“Should I use the word I’m thinking of?” he said, pausing meditatively in a recent interview with the Tampa Bay Times. “It sucked.”
But the imperfections were a ready canvas for Lopano, who craved an airport to call his own after 14 years as the No. 2 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He convinced his interviewers that he, with no prior experience as a CEO, could lead the region’s travel hub to success.
“I was the only one interviewing for the job that was never a CEO,” Lopano said. “I said, ‘Somebody has to make you a CEO. You’re not born a CEO.’”
Thirteen years later, Lopano has ushered in changes that local leaders gush about. A new rental car center. The dawn of an international terminal, set to open in 2028. Coveted flights from South America, Europe and the West Coast. A revitalized main terminal adorned with a towering statue of a pink flamingo (named Phoebe) and a fresh wave of local vendors airside like Columbia Restaurant, Buddy Brew Coffee and Mise en Place.
Now, Lopano is leaving the airport behind.
In February, he announced he’ll retire in April 2025, when his contract ends. Since then, he’s seen no shortage of rewards and praise: He received over $1.1 million in pay this year, his most ever.
“I personally don’t know if I’ve met anyone who is a better leader,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said in August.
It wasn’t always so. Lopano remembers more doubters than cheerleaders at the beginning.
He took the role at a precarious time. His predecessor, Louis Miller, had abruptly resigned the year before when his decisions for the airport drew heat from his bosses, board members of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority. Lopano remembers encountering the same skepticism.
“Here’s a new guy that just came in who thinks he can do X, Y, Z. (I was) red meat,” he said.
Miller had bristled at an aviation authority board member’s plan to bolster Tampa International’s meager roster of international flights, setting the stage for Tampa to compete with much larger airports in Orlando and Miami. But what got Lopano the job, from his perspective, was his confident answer to the question, “Can you get international flights?”
Yes, he said.
And Lopano didn’t waste time. He wooed airline executives with a new message: Tampa wasn’t a sleepy city of a little over 300,000, he told them. It was the “gateway to the West Coast of Florida,” a booming stretch of vacation spots with millions of residents and dozens of options within an hour’s drive. Orlando, Sarasota and Naples were all destinations Tampa International could offer to tourists, business people and residents.
That courtship raised doubts, said Janet Scherberger, Lopano’s director of communications from the beginning of his tenure to her retirement in 2020. Some wondered what Lopano would have to show for all his fancy dinners with airline executives.
International flights
The first payoff came six months into the job. Lopano, with the help of Chris Minner, his No. 2 whom he brought with him from Dallas, secured a nonstop flight to Zurich from Edelweiss Air. Lopano remembers throwing his arms around Minner in celebration.
“People saw that big, old, wide (plane) body on the ground, and they’re like, ‘Maybe, right? Maybe this could work,’” he said. “And another one came, and another one came, and the doubters went under the bed.”
A rush of new flights came in the first years of Lopano’s tenure. For him, it was all a numbers game, Scherberger said. Where were people flying to and from Tampa? Where weren’t there nonstop flights already? Who could he convince?
In December 2013, Copa Airlines began offering flights to Panama City, Panama — “the gateway to South America,” according to Tampa International. In June 2014, Alaska Airlines launched a flight to Seattle.
In 2015 came Lopano’s biggest win: Lufthansa began flying from Tampa to Frankfurt, the gateway to Europe. Two years later, United Airlines launched a direct route to San Francisco.
More victories came later. Portland, Oregon was added to Alaska’s roster in 2021. This year, Aeromexico began daily direct flights to Mexico City.
Redesigning the airport
It wasn’t just flights that Lopano wanted. He wanted an airport that looked “modern and cool” — and in 2011, Tampa International was not that, he said. The main terminal was cramped by boxy storefronts. Rental car companies were split between an on-site facility that crowded the main terminal and an off-site garage.
So began the master stroke that has defined Lopano’s tenure. Ground first broke on the three-part plan a decade ago.
In 2018, the first phase debuted with a main terminal expansion and redesign, 69 restaurants and shops and a rental car center. The Mitsubishi-built SkyConnect train could carry customers to the new center in less than five minutes, where they’d find 16 companies and up to 5,300 vehicles.
With 55,000 more square feet, the main terminal felt open, airy, light. Everything Lopano wanted.
Changes didn’t stop there. A point of personal pride for Lopano was the 270,000-square-foot SkyCenter One office building where he works, with a prime view of planes lifting off above a glistening Tampa Bay. Before SkyCenter, which opened in 2021, the site served as storage for smashed rental cars.
“They were parked here so morbidly. Every once in a while I’d drive by and say, ‘Oh, that was a bad one,’” Lopano said.
Lopano made good on a different vision. Now a pair of binoculars are perched on a table in his office, ready to catch a particularly beautiful jet gliding through the sky.
Passing the reins
Lopano, 69, has big plans for retirement. He’ll split time between Indian Rocks Beach and Dallas, with a couple months in Italy and Hawaii in between. He’s hoping to get in touch with his Italian roots. Spend time with his six grandkids. Hide out in Michigan’s upper peninsula with a black-and-white film camera, reconnecting with his passion for photography.
But before any of that happens, Lopano must wrap up a year-long farewell tour.
“The way you leave counts,” he said.
Lopano will hand off the capstone of his plan for the airport — international terminal Airside D — to the hands of a successor. A battle already is underway among four of Lopano’s executive vice presidents, Minner included. Luckily, Lopano says, it’s not his choice to make.
He said he wants the next CEO to embody a motto he repeats often: “enabling greatness in others.”
It’s a line Scherberger, a former Tampa Bay Times reporter, scoffed at when Lopano first said it in a 2011 interview.
“I was like, ‘Really? Is that the truth?’” Scherberger said. “But he really does.”
Lopano made employee-focused changes when he first arrived. He allowed staff to present at aviation authority meetings. He had all employees draft goals for the year. Scherberger credits Lopano for achieving a personal goal: quitting smoking.
Ken Atwater, president of Hillsborough Community College, said besides Lopano’s New York accent, that’s what he’ll miss the most: Lopano’s dedication to their mutual success. When the airport needed people to staff SkyConnect, Lopano hired Atwater’s students.
“I want to see another Joe,” Atwater said.
Last Wednesday, Lopano stopped by his old office in the airport’s main terminal. It’s now home to operations. He walked room to room, greeting each employee, asking how he could help.
“Are you guys hot?” he said. Staffers nodded yes. “We need to get some air conditioning in here.”
He dialed a number as he headed out. “Hey, you got a minute?”
Minutes later, soothing, cool air wafted in over employees’ backs.
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