These days, Tampa Bay's most important flights come and go from TIA. But for a while, most of Tampa's passengers flew from another airport, and it's named for one of the most powerful people in the city's history.
Why do they call it Peter O. Knight Airport?
"In the unlikely event of a water landing..."
You've heard that before, just before takeoff at Tampa International Airport. But there was a time in this town when a water landing was quite likely.
Tampa's first city airport was Peter O. Knight Airport on Davis Islands. And the main runway was the waters of Tampa Bay. In the earliest days of aviation, seaplanes were as common as wheeled ones.
"Seaplanes would come and land. They'd taxi up to the shore, and then they had wheels also, and they would go the rest of the way onto shore, and go right up to the terminal," said Rodney Kite-Powell, curator of history at the Tampa Bay History Center.
"It was pretty much a natural choice to have it named for Peter O. Knight," Kite-Powell said. Natural, huh? Why's that?
"By the 1920s and 30s, he was really the go-to guy -- he was the power guy -- for not only Tampa, but really for Florida when things were going on nationally," Kite-Powell explained.
Made mayor of Ft. Myers at 20 years old, Peter Oliphant Knight and his young wife Lillie then moved to this small Tampa home in 1889.
This man oozed influence.
There are today just eleven companies in Tampa that are more than 100 years old, and Peter O. Knight helped found four of them. He declined -- turned down -- an offer to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice.
Eventually, the airport's classy terminal was abandoned, sailboats supplanted seaplanes here, and TIA was built with its big new jet runways.
But that name -- one of the most influential in Tampa's history -- still flies.
Why do they call it that? Now you know.
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Grayson Kamm, 10 News