urbanSTL

You don't usually see this plane type in the flight tracker. Just thought it was interesting since you don't usually see military type planes in it.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/HOR ... /KSTL/KAMA

No, that you don't. I wonder if that one is civilian owned. Maybe the F-15SE Boeing demonstrator? I've seen that parked on the north side of the airport every now and then. Also seeing more military flyovers from my yard lately, though I've been unable to see them quickly enough to really ID them. (Need to start sitting out on my deck with binoculars and a camera.) Interesting that the ID should be HORNT when it says it's an Eagle.

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ ... 01fad.html

8% is pretty much the norm this year? Thought I saw that percentage earlier in the thread

^ That has been in the range of what the past year has been in year over year comparison. and this thanksgiving is on top of a strong growth last November. The slowest growth rate this year was around 6% or so, and that was due to Southwest having that system failure. The airports traffic reports give a nice breakdown month by month.

Interesting is noting in the article the huge growth in connecting passengers. This is likely due to some of the routes added by Southwest this past year being heavily tied to connecting people here and timed to maximize it. Just not sure how much of the Southwest traffic here is due to people connecting here, but hopefully facilities aren't getting too crowded to handle more people laying over here in terms of shops and restaurants. Guessing the non-connecting traffic demand is growing well too.

In about a week or two Southwest does publish their summer schedule for booking, so will be interesting to see what that looks like relative to last summer. As to possible extra gates on their end, that would make sense due to how everything is tied up at certain times of day and if they want to utilize more connections. Also, those three international capable gates if they are needed for that would make them need gates elsewhere (though some of it could be for Southwest's own international flights down the road, which is a plus for having it in terminal 2 since some of that traffic would go onward from here) Problem could be that going into D they have to do noticeable work in making it suitable for today's travelers in terms of amenities.

matguy70 wrote:
Correct. I just noticed last week that STL is now listing old "D" Gates as "upcoming" E Gates #E34 E36 E38 E40 - future expansion...maybe soon.

I flew out of Terminal 2 today at Gate E31 to Newark/NYC. Concourse E is a madhouse and the lines are crazy for any of the restaurants, services. I can actually see Southwest expanding again - and possibly soon - giver these gates re-numbered "E" now. Every gate today was filled to capacity at 8:45 a.m. The new area at E31-E33 (the international gates) being used for SWA were packed as well. I walked down the concourse towards the closed area around the bend to see... the old concourse D portion there looks great (albeit closed at that point) looking into the concourse it looked clean, new carpeting, the moving walkways look good and looks like you could just open it and be ready to run. Ironically, there was a couple Southwest planes parked at E34 and E36 (they were loading luggage over there on the tarmac.

Here is a map off the Lambert PDF for the new Terminal 2 Concourse Passenger Lounge bid proposals which list the gates now as "E".

My fiance had a flight out at 1:30 in T2. She also said it was crazy at that time. The weird part about it was she said they were doing security different than I have ever seen it. They would line 10 people up and have a bomb sniffing dog go by them all twice. Then if they were clear they just went through a metal detector instead of the body scan and didn't have to take of shoes or anything. Kind of like if she had tsa-pre (which she didn't),with an added dog sniff.

I really hope they get the traffic to open up more gates. That would be great. I am still interested to see how they replace the SNA route, if they do replace it with something.

Kansas City is trying to lure a flight to London. They are pooling also from Witchita, Omaha, and St Joseph. Any scenario they get one before us?


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Chalupas54 wrote:Kansas City is trying to lure a flight to London. They are pooling also from Witchita, Omaha, and St Joseph. Any scenario they get one before us?

An article came out over the last couple days that Indy is also. But they also acted like it wasn't anytime soon.

I can't imagine KC gets one before us. it is 2.5 (Omaha)-3.5 (Wichita)hours to drive from those cities to MCI. That doesn't save you much time, if any, over just getting on a plane locally and flying through Chicago. That would be like us saying, well just lump Indy in with us. For the Wichita distance you could almost say we want to lump KC in with us also.

matguy70 wrote:Same security difference for me today too. But the dog sniffers have been there before and I still have to go through normal security. Today... went literally through - all items stayed in bags (no laptops out) jackets, shoes, belts left on and walked through out metal detector and that was it. I had this experience once before in Seattle about a year ago. Very strange. Does anyone know how that really is "secure"?

We were not lined up - but the dog sniffed all the line as you waited to go through security.

I suspect the dogs are a lot more effective than the voyeur machine.

shadrach wrote:

Chalupas54 wrote:Kansas City is trying to lure a flight to London. They are pooling also from Witchita, Omaha, and St Joseph. Any scenario they get one before us?

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I can't imagine why they wouldn't.

They get everything—IKEA, Top Golf, Free People, McCormick & Schmick, Streetcar, Google Fiber—before us.
It's what they do.

Streetcar? streetcar? a 2 mile streetcar? i think they'll trade their 2 mile streetcar for our 46 miles of light rail and they'll throw in fiber, top golf, half the Royals baseball team, and $25,000,000 to trade.

LOL.

Top Golf LOL
Streetcar 2 miles toy train that is only getting lots of use because it is FREE and goes really nowhere and was HIGHLY subsidized by the city and zoning. McCormick and Scmidts LOL and Google Fiber... blah.

We just do it bigger and better. We have an incredible rail system (all 46 miles) and runs all right away and have a downtown subway and Clayton (uptown) subway stations.

matguy70 wrote:Back to the airport thread

Via Metrolink.

http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/air ... s-in-1q17/

Southwest upgrading to 737-800s on some routes to/from STL. I think it adds 32 seats each.

Alaska however, is downgrading one of their daily flights from Seattle from a 737 to a RJ-175.

jshank83 wrote:Alaska however, is downgrading one of their daily flights from Seattle from a 737 to a RJ-175.

This is likely seasonal. Demand to Seattle drops off sharply outside of the April-September timeframe.

gregl wrote:

jshank83 wrote:Alaska however, is downgrading one of their daily flights from Seattle from a 737 to a RJ-175.

This is likely seasonal. Demand to Seattle drops off sharply outside of the April-September timeframe.

Starting in May is when they are downgrading to the smaller plane.

I see rankings of busiest airports by total passenger boardings a lot. But I was wondering which airports had the most originating passengers going into the terminal, not just changing planes. Here is the list of the top 50 that I found on the US Dept of Transportation site -- 2nd Quarter of 2016.
http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/airfares

Rank of US Airports by Originating Passengers by Gary Kreie, on Flickr

That point might be best illustrated by Miami. Only 50K more originating passengers than STL, and yet much of the country's primary gateway to the Caribbean, Central and South America.

wabash wrote:That point might be best illustrated by Miami. Only 50K more originating passengers than STL, and yet much of the country's primary gateway to the Caribbean, Central and South America.

Look at FLL's numbers, that is where a lot of the locals fly in/out of while MIA is, as you say, gateway traffic to CA/SA/Caribbean.

Interesting chart, thanks for posting.

Crazy that KC is only 23k behind us. Lot less population, but I guess they travel more than we do.....Odd

whitherSTL wrote:Crazy that KC is only 23k behind us. Lot less population, but I guess they travel more than we do.....Odd

Or they draw from more of the surrounding area? Might be that they HAVE to fly more, not choose to. STL isn't as geographically isolated as KC, so unless you're going to STL, someone in KC would almost have to fly to wherever they wanted to get there quickly.

^Good point pdm. Hadn't thought of that. I guess the West Palm airport also comes into play, although to a lesser extent.

As for the KC-STL comparison, just thought I'd point out that while St. Louis appears to only top KC by 23,000 originating airline passengers per quarter (or at least in Q2), its Amtrak ridership surpasses KC by an average of 30,000 originating passengers per quarter (at least in 2015). That goes to ricke's point of STL being less geographically isolated, which in turn makes it more accommodating of train travel.

In all, air originations are about 14X the number of rail originations in St. Louis. So, the total is a drop in the bucket, but in terms of STL-KC comparison it's actually worth taking into account. Taking rail into account, STL is about 825,000 and KC is about 775,000 (quarterly originating passengers).