urbanSTL

I think this is a simple, but really nice idea:

New seating at Lambert offers soothing support

By Ken Leiser

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

11/14/2007



Merle Wright settled into a blue rocking chair while waiting for his flight to Houston.



"Let me put it this way," Wright said with a smile, "it's interesting."



Wright was among the first Tuesday morning to try out 70 new rocking chairs deployed throughout the gate areas of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The local Rock Road band belted out classics such as — what else? — "Rock Around the Clock" and "Rockin' Robin" near the East Terminal ticket counters to mark the occasion.

Link

DeBaliviere wrote:I think this is a simple, but really nice idea:

New seating at Lambert offers soothing support

By Ken Leiser

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

11/14/2007



Merle Wright settled into a blue rocking chair while waiting for his flight to Houston.



"Let me put it this way," Wright said with a smile, "it's interesting."



Wright was among the first Tuesday morning to try out 70 new rocking chairs deployed throughout the gate areas of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The local Rock Road band belted out classics such as — what else? — "Rock Around the Clock" and "Rockin' Robin" near the East Terminal ticket counters to mark the occasion.

Link

It would be cool to see Lambert lead in something. The rocking chairs are fine, but hardly newsworthy. I know I've seen these in airports for years.

Any word on what was supposed to be announced today?

STLMO314 wrote:Any word on what was supposed to be announced today?

Seriously, what the hell? Was it the Southwest additions?? The rocking chairs? I was expecting something kind of important...

That's because as we originally posted the news was last Thursday. It was the flights to Philly. The original posting is from Wednesday, November 7. Southwest announced on Thursday, November 8. I've been wondering what all the chatter was about thinking I maybe missed something.

Have some LAX flights coming up...would love to see the 767 vs the 757 or MD-80 - would really make that upgrade worthwhile.



Was also wonder about the 738 that I saw parked at C35 or so on Friday, all by itself. Those are my favorite AA narrowbody planes up front, and wouldn't mind seeing more of them, but it's probably not likely.

I'm sorry. How in the hell does Memphis have flights to Europe and STL does not? Please explain. Also, when using airport codes, could you please also include the city? thanks.

NWA is now advertising non-stop service between Hartford, CT (BDL) and Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS). (And they were $480 round-trip!).

Part of Delta's strategy when they recently came out of chapter 11 was to focus on international flights, particularly destinations uncommonly served (ie Kiev). I've read that NWA is following that business model to some degree.

In any case. It tears me up that Memphis and Hartford have daily international flights and St. Louis has nothing. Considering our important place in aviation history (not to mention our population) it seems so wrong.

Wabash wrote:NWA is now advertising non-stop service between Hartford, CT (BDL) and Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS). (And they were $480 round-trip!).

Part of Delta's strategy when they recently came out of chapter 11 was to focus on international flights, particularly destinations uncommonly served (ie Kiev). I've read that NWA is following that business model to some degree.

In any case. It tears me up that Memphis and Hartford have daily international flights and St. Louis has nothing. Considering our important place in aviation history (not to mention our population) it seems so wrong.

Hartford does have one a day to Amsterdam, however their service is on a 757 (they had to remove seats and cargo capactiy as it was pushing the range of the 757). According to an NWA FA on my other blog, the route is consistently near full...

JMedwick wrote:

They for what ever reason would rather have ORD and DFW congested.

Because for whatever reason the FAA is a-ok with throwing away taxpayer dollars to alleviate congestion and add capacity at ORD after throwing dollars to add capacity and alleviate congestion at a half empty airports like Lambert and Pitt.

Pittsburgh has got it worse than Lambert when it comes to cutbacks. US Airways has drastically reduced its operations there. At least STL is seeing growth along with AA adding small regional flights, but when will we see international destinations besides Canada and Mexico? I'd like to see flights to Europe and Asia from here, those alone will help boost the area economy. Hopefully, with the B787 European and Asian will become reality. Why not fill both airplanes with passengers and cargo? I know some airlines have contracts with USPS or FedEx and often carry their parcels....that may help fill a plane and make a route profitable. I read an article about this a couple weeks ago.



I don't understand how the government would allow taxpayer money to be wasted on expanding and reconfiguring O'****'s runway and taxiways. There was opposition, but I guess they want to make it a more efficient hub. IMO I think this will make ORD more congested than it currently is.

^ I did read that there's no guarantee that O'Hare will be granted additional landings/capacity after the improvements there. As I understand it, this is a seperate process. One would hope that the additional capacity would be used to help flights arrive/depart on-time.

10-intuition wrote:

JMedwick wrote:

They for what ever reason would rather have ORD and DFW congested.

Because for whatever reason the FAA is a-ok with throwing away taxpayer dollars to alleviate congestion and add capacity at ORD after throwing dollars to add capacity and alleviate congestion at a half empty airports like Lambert and Pitt.

Pittsburgh has got it worse than Lambert when it comes to cutbacks. US Airways has drastically reduced its operations there. At least STL is seeing growth along with AA adding small regional flights, but when will we see international destinations besides Canada and Mexico? I'd like to see flights to Europe and Asia from here, those alone will help boost the area economy. Hopefully, with the B787 European and Asian will become reality. Why not fill both airplanes with passengers and cargo? I know some airlines have contracts with USPS or FedEx and often carry their parcels....that may help fill a plane and make a route profitable. I read an article about this a couple weeks ago.



I don't understand how the government would allow taxpayer money to be wasted on expanding and reconfiguring O'****'s runway and taxiways. There was opposition, but I guess they want to make it a more efficient hub. IMO I think this will make ORD more congested than it currently is.

I've got two words for you as to why O'Hare is getting expanded: Mayor Daley. What Mayor Daley wants, Mayor Daley gets. And God have mercy on those that oppose him.

I wouldn't say FAA is throwing tax dollars at ORD. Like St. Louis, most capital investments like ORD and Lambert's runway are funded in part by bonds that will be payed by the passenger user fee. Chicago has a much larger passenger base to fund their expansion upon, a mayor who recogninzes the cash that is being generated at these facilities, and truly a need to re-configure their irregular runway configuration.

Maybe our airport is failing because it's controlled by ST. LOUIS CITY... We should allow foreign carriers to land at Lambert TAX FREE!! why not, there certainly aren't ANY paying taxes now, we might as well be a magnet for them to fly here. Do others really not understand this logic? How could anyone with a brain be opposed to this concept? We could make St. Louis THE cheapest landing destination in the United States. Imagine how much we would gain overall, even without those tax dollars.

St. Louis City's theory: squeeze the last drop of blood out of the rock... sad, how low have we sunk... ?

AA to sell American Eagle-this is very shocking to me and many others. I don't know if this is good or bad for St. Louis. I would think if anything the remaining Eagle routes would be sent to American Connection and possibly to Md-80s on mainline. We only have American Eagle operations to a few cities (New York-JFK, Springfield, Nashville, and San Antonio (starts 12/13). The rest of our regional feed on AA is by American Connection, which is similar to what AE will be become. Two links below



http://www.aa.com/content/amrcorp/press ... agle.jhtml

http://www.airliners.net/discussions/ge ... n/3725559/

I enjoyed that discussion, especially concerning air cargo in the mix. I could understand where having both a cargo and first class demand would really change the revenue equation for international flights. The one thing that adds to Lambert's future, in my mind, is the amount developable land for industrial and distribution (from McEagles development near Duke's new warehouse to North Park). Lambert has made the big investment in capacity and noise mitigation. I think this will reap bigger rewards for the region as a whole.

Just flew back from Detroit on Northwest Airlines this week.



As an American Airlines gold card member, I am annoyed that AA has 0 non-stop flights to Detroit. Both Northwest and Southwest airlines do -- and not on puddle jumper airplanes. I flew up on an Airbus A19 and back on an MD-80.



According to this web site, Detroit is the 5th highest destination city of all passengers originating from St. Louis. (6th highest airport).



http://paxdata.airlineempires.net/topci ... yield&dir=



So why does AA makes its business travelers go through Chicago or switch to NW or SW? I also fly to Minneapolis a lot, usually on AA. But I'm planning to start switching over to NW airlines which has non-stops on big planes to both. I'll need to check into NW connections to SF and San Jose -- the other place I frequent on business.



I realize AA thinks it can't compete on price with SW and NW to Detroit and Phoenix where the fares are low, but they should consider losing long-time AA frequent flyers who prefer non-stop -- to the NW and SW plans. I would think they would want to keep frequent flyers to the top 10 cities St. Louisans fly to.



Here are the top 10.

1. Chicago ORD

2. Las Vegas LAS

3. Orlando MCO

4. Phoenix PHX

5. Chicago Midway MDW

6. Detroit DTW

7. LA LAX

8. Dallas Love DAL

9. Dallas DFW

10. Denver DEN