A beauty!
A lot of friends told me that this airport was the best, I can now agree with them.
Easy to navigate, people flow is easy, you don't get lost so easily as in other airports. An extra nice touch is to divide the airport in Blue and Red areas depending on the airline you are flying with, so the lounge, the airtrain and the satellite will be color coded and you just need to know your airline and gate to be ready to go. On the arrival side, it is much easier, you disembark and follow the color/airline to your carousel in a route that will be straight forward.
Vehicle flow was a breeze due to the correct planning of all the access and the layout of the departure and arrivals areas, everything is perfectly organized and you don´t need to get in areas you don´t want to be in. If you are there for a departure, the traffic for arrivals won't bother you at all and vice versa. There are three lines at each section, just for download or pickup and a fourth one for through traffic. As long as the driver stays with the vehicle there are no problems with the cops or your car being towed away. At departures areas there are lots of curbside baggage check in counters. At arrivals area, there are big outdoor display board with the arrivals information, so drivers can stay at their cars while waiting for their passengers, neat. And also, a nice touch is that the carousels are assigned to specific airlines, so frequent flyer's are always picked at the same gates.
And for taxis and shuttles things are just neat, at the end points of the arrivals areas you get a waiting room and meeting point for the shuttle of your preference. I got arrangements with Blue One and they ask you to call them when your plane lands, in the time it takes you to walk from your gate to the carousels and go out they will be ready to pick you, great timing and planning.
Downtown Tampa is just 15-20 minutes away (except of course at rush hour) and it costs around US$10-12 by shuttle or US$20 by cab, prices are of Feb '07.
Take a look at Tampa's Airport website, very informative.
www.tampaairport.com