urbanSTL

I seriously doubt that just based on the spacing between gates. Considering it has the FIS facility at the airport I always thought it was some new gateway for TWA's international flights that just never happened.

I should rephrase part of my earlier statement on Southwest's airport selection. Staying away from smaller airports at smaller metro areas while taking advantage of secondary airports of large metro areas (Midway in Chicago, etc.)



I believe the lease on Concourse D between Lambert and American Airlines expired last year. Carryover from TWA if I'm not mistaken. I noticed Frontier using one of the D-gates on my last trip out.



My preference with D - TEAR IT DOWN!!! Seperate Main from East Terminal. Opens up a couple of options in my mind. 1) Space to add some new International Gates onto East Terminal instead of the hand me down gates at the end of D or is it considered East Terminal. 2) Why not put it up for a long term private operator Lease? Might give the airport some needed funds for additional upgrades 3) A private operator might aggresively pursue an international flight or two. Especially with Open Skies rules coming into play.

Frontier's been using the D gates since they arrived at the airport (or shortly after they started service)

HMSHost delivers local flavour to St Louis Airport – 17/07/08

Source: ©The Moodie Report UK



By Matt Willey



Print Email US. Autogrill subsidiary HMSHost, in conjunction with its joint-venture partner D&D Concessions, is adding seven new dining offerings at Lambert-St Louis International as part of a lease extension award (as reported) to provide food and beverage concessions at the airport until 2020.



During the 12-year contract, HMSHost says it will spend approximately US$16 million in a bid to introduce more local and upscale dining venues as part of the airport’s initiative to improve the passenger experience.



Currently under construction are The Pasta House Co, scheduled to open in the autumn, and Missouri Wine Bar and Brioche Dorée Café, opening early 2009. Other locations will begin construction and open throughout 2009 and early 2010.



“By extending our relationship with HMSHost, we are giving travellers more choice and a more authentic St Louis dining experience at the airport,” said Lambert-St Louis International Airport Director Richard Hrabko.



“Restaurants such as Mosaics Tapas Fusion are redefining St Louis cuisine and now they will help redefine our concession programme.”



HMSHost Vice President of Business Development Stephen Douglas said: “HMSHost is pleased to be a part of Lambert-St Louis International Airport’s concession renovations.



READ MORE:

http://www.moodiereport.com/document.ph ... c_id=18119









Monday, July 14, 2008 - 10:47 AM CDT

Lambert-St. Louis International Airport launches new Web site

St. Louis Business Journal - by Kelsey Volkmann



Lambert-St. Louis International Airport has launched a new Web site with the aim of promoting St. Louis, the airport said Monday.



In addition to changing the address to http://www.FlySTL.com, the airport redesigned its Web site. The most requested information by fliers -- flight information, airlines, ground transportation, maps and parking -- now appear on the front page. Users can log on to find the St. Louis area forecast and a link to information about Lambert's shops and restaurants.



READ MORE:

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stor ... aily2.html







Lambert proceeds with renovations

By Ken Leiser

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

07/16/2008



Lambert-St. Louis International Airport will proceed with what it deems the most important parts of the Airport Experience renovations, despite turbulent times in the airline industry.



Airport Director Richard Hrabko said Tuesday that $16.9 million worth of upgrades will begin this month.



First up will be the resurfacing the dingy-white dome above the airline ticketing counters.



Next year, new baggage carousels should be installed. The design already has started.



READ MORE:

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/s ... enDocument

That website leaves me speechless. An attractive, easy to navigate website is crucial. That site is fitting of a novice intern's work circa 1997. Whoever is in marketing or advertising leadership needs removed from their duties if they deem that an acceptable work.

It's light years better than the former Lambert website, if that's any consolation.

My favorite airline (when I was living in KC) is going away completely in St. Louis. Booo. Well, it's not like they had a lot of flights out of St. Louis anyway.

Midwest to drop St. Louis flights on Sept. 8

By Tim Logan

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

07/21/2008



There will be no more cookies for St. Louis fliers.



Midwest Airlines announced this morning that it will depart from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, effective Sept. 8, part of a massive restructuring as the airline tries to survive rising fuel costs.



The Milwaukee-based discount airline, well-known for its practice of giving fresh-baked cookies to all passengers, runs two daily flights between St. Louis and its hub in Milwaukee. It also runs a hub operation in Kansas City, where hundreds of people are expected to lose their jobs after an announcement last week that Midwest will lay off 40 percent of its work force. St. Louis is one of eight cities it is exiting entirely.



Passengers holding tickets for flights after Sept. 8 will be contacted by the airline and can be re-scheduled or get a full refund.

Unhappy to hear that Midwest Air is seriously in trouble everywhere - hence the cuts.



Article:



http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/s ... aily3.html



"Facing increasing pressure from high fuel prices, Midwest Airlines plans to cut its flight schedule.



The carrier made the announcement just a week after revealing plans to cut about 1,200 jobs, or 40 percent of current staffing levels."



"Midwest will now have 90 daily departures to 28 cities, down from 118 departures to 38 cities."



"It will also stop nonstop flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle; those flights will now stop in Kansas City, Mo., where the airline will pick up additional fuel and passengers.



Midwest will discontinue its service outright to Baltimore; Hartford, Conn.; Louisville, Ky.; Raleigh/Durham, N.C.; and St. Louis."



"In Kansas City, Midwest is cutting its work force 40 percent, including 110 of its 274 local employees. The cutbacks in Kansas City will include an airline kitchen, which has about 40 employees. Currently Midwest has 25 daily departures from KCI, but plans to cut service in half by September."

Did Northwest Airlines become a major shareholder in Midwest last year but had to keep it independent? It was Midwest Airlines way of fending off an Airtran bid I believe. I wonder if it would have been more beneficial for STL if Midwest folded into Airtran instead.

I forgot to charge my cell phone last Sunday night so I showed up at the airport Monday morning with a nearly dead battery.



It dawned on me that unlike at other airports I've seen with free cubicles for laptop/cell charging (or even just an abundance of electrical outlets), at Lambert you still have to fight it out with other people for an outlet. I wound up charging my phone a bit while waiting for my connection in Minneapolis, where a couple of the food courts have bar-style seating with a power plug for every seat.



Barring a dramatic reversal of trends in the airline industry, I can't see the disused gates in C or D getting used at any time in the foreseeable future. I also noticed that recently, a former US Air gate in A is now vacant. These'd be perfect places to set up a little business center where people can charge up their electronics or get some work done while waiting.

All Gates in C Councourse are used by American Airlines STL Hub.



Gates D8, D10 are used by Great Lakes Airlines

Gates D4 & D6 are used by Frontier Airlines

There are 10 available gates in D Concourse (not used/leased) currently.



All E Gates are leased and used.



All A Gates are leased and used. I don't know if you saw a gate that is remodeling or not - but all gates in A are full.

A8 is still vacant as of now (space is de-branded, seats removed, etc), although admittedly it's been a while since I've seen the far end of C. I recall walking all the way to the end about a year and a half ago and remarking to my girlfriend that they could film a sequel to "The Langoliers" back there.



Either way, the power situation still sucks at Lambert.

Definitely can note the difference in time between the older concourses and the East Terminal. No problem with my laptop plugged in at E4 as I type. Seems bright in the concourse even with an overcast sky.



I believe the old lease for D concourse (TWA leftover) had expired and wasn't renewed by American. That is why you see some gates being used. I still believe its time to knock down part or all lf Concoure D. How about B? I believe Airtran is the only airport using a gate.

I can picture replacing Concourse B with some well built and designed international gates when the plane every time I come home. Something that actually compliments the Main Lobby from a viewpoint that visitors/businessmen see first. It doesn't have to be many gates - four gates to accomondate the new dreamliner. Heck, with all the unused space it won't impact ops nor does require a massive outlay of replacing an airport or building an all new terminal.

Dredger wrote:I can picture replacing Concourse B with some well built and designed international gates when the plane every time I come home.

Wouldn't we need some international flights for that?

Jblues, I would agree with your logic. However, if you are going to make a huge investment such as the new runway and buying up neighborhoods for sound mitigation instead of building a new airport you should be able to follow up with some respectable investments in your main terminal.



Getting international flights is going to take full court press front all sides. In one bright spot, InBev might be the one corporate sponsor who might push for resumption of an European flight if we make a serious effort to invest. Otherwise, Missouri is going wait a long time if we expect an airline to resume daily internaitional flights let alone provide the capital for gate upgrades.

bikin'_man wrote:there is that flight to canada(air canada). and a few to mexico and the domician as well as montego bay(usa3000)

I stand corrected.

Dredger wrote: However, if you are going to make a huge investment such as the new runway and buying up neighborhoods for sound mitigation instead of building a new airport you should be able to follow up with some respectable investments in your main terminal.

This assumes that said huge investment was prudent and offered any chance of return in the next century or so. But when you blow $1B ($2B with interest) on an unneeded runway, it kinda sorta puts a crimp in your ability to invest in improvements that might actually have been needed in the first place.

bonwich wrote:

Dredger wrote: However, if you are going to make a huge investment such as the new runway and buying up neighborhoods for sound mitigation instead of building a new airport you should be able to follow up with some respectable investments in your main terminal.

This assumes that said huge investment was prudent and offered any chance of return in the next century or so. But when you blow $1B ($2B with interest) on an unneeded runway, it kinda sorta puts a crimp in your ability to invest in improvements that might actually have been needed in the first place.

I always here people complaining about the new runway. I am not completely informed, so correct me if I am wrong.



When the airport started planning, land acquisitions, and construction Lambert needed a new runway because the current configuration was condusive to delays. It was my understanding that the runway was needed to secure the future of the airport. I don't see how what happened Sept. 11, 2001 and soon after in the industry is the fault of the airport. Were they supposed to stop construction?



An d to my knowledge the next phase was for Terminal Improvements, but with what had happened in the industry it was not feasible to carry on with the improvements that were needed. we are finaly starting to see some of the improvements to the main terminal.



Fill me in.

STLtoSA wrote:When the airport started planning, land acquisitions, and construction Lambert needed a new runway because the current configuration was condusive to delays. It was my understanding that the runway was needed to secure the future of the airport. Fill me in.

That was the general "understanding" because that was the story put out by those who wanted the runway built, who happened to include a number of people who would benefit directly from the $1B in public spending (by getting construction contracts, etc.).



However, during the whole planning process, there was repeated objection from probable experts (such as airline pilots) that the configuration as designed a) wouldn't provide significant improvement in operational efficiencies, even in bad weather, even with best-case capacity expansion scenarios; b) more important, any scheduling efficiencies that would be achieved would be dampened, eliminated or reversed by the fact that taxiing time would be increased so radically.



9/11 certainly damaged prior assumptions, but many other airports eventually bounced back nicely. One of the other fatal flaws at Lambert stemmed from the moronic decision to try to attract TWA headquarters to St. Louis. At the time, TWA was badly damaged goods; St. Louis, in its usual wisdom, threw millions upon millions of dollars at it to prop it up and also based virtually its entire airport strategy on TWA's continued health.



And let's also not forget that, during this process, the region spent another half a billion dollars to build a totally useless airport in Metro East.

To set the record straight about the Lambert Expansion:



The project was developed and approved by the airport and the FAA, not the design and construction firms that later participated in the project.



The project did not involve public money. If you flew, you paid for it. If you didn’t fly, you didn’t pay for it.



Some pilots were for it; some were against it. Opponents said that aircraft taxiing to the far end of the new runway would make it inefficient, failing to mention that virtually no aircraft would be required to taxi to that end of the runway. Reality since the new runway has opened verifies the latter point; aircraft depart to the west and land from the west, so they taxi to and from the end nearest to the terminal.



Like all airports, Lambert has an obligation to provide an efficient airfield to airlines, so they can efficiently serve passengers. In the 1990s, TWA was Lambert’s major carrier, thus the airport had an obligation to provide TWA with an efficient airfield. The new runway would do that, so the airport built it. Delays because of weather in St. Louis have, in fact, decreased since the new runway opened, which was what it was designed for.



The factors that did in TWA and have thrown commercial aviation into its chaotic status were unprecedented, and no one predicted them in the 1990s. The predictions that were made by opponents in the 1990s have not occurred.