It has generally been accepted that Tampa International Airport is one of the greatest airports in the world.

It is a crown jewel in this community, one of the relatively few public facilities that has ever been built where we can all pretty agree really does work - that is if you can survive getting in and getting out of the place.

If you have been anywhere near TIA in recent months, then you too have experienced the nightmare of simply trying to figure out where you are going. And we live here! We’re sorta supposed to know! Aren’t we?

Not to put too fine a dramatic spin on this, but I almost bought the ranch Friday morning in the midst of TIA’s Chinese fire drill of a road system.

After dropping off Plato the Elder at the terminal, I was happily motoring away from the airport when suddenly the car in front of me just stopped, dead cold stopped in the middle lane of the roadway. It was obvious the couple in front of me was lost, or confused. In a few moments, we could all be dead.

They were talking. Having an animated conversation, which I imagined went something like this:
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’m know where I’m going, I just can’t figure out how to get there.”

I had visions of on-coming traffic ramming into us, as the couple in front of me continued their discourse.

And it only after I laid on the horn, did the realization appear to come them that they had indeed come to a full stop in the middle of a busy thoroughfare.

FINALLY, they started to move forward.

Now is is certainly true the road construction around TIA is a massive project and it is something of a wonder, given the scale of the effort that traffic manages to move at around all the cement.

However the airport still needs to figure out a way to improve its signage, or the lack-thereof.

After all, I’m interested in flying the friendly skies, not the friendly heavens.