urbanSTL

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jan 02, 2024

jshank83 wrote:
On a side note. Air Canada finally announced the Montreal-STL flight, which was loaded in the schedule 3 months ago.

https://media.aircanada.com/2023-12-14- ... ork-Growth

Just booked for the inaugural flight on May 2nd. They currently have great prices $166 USD one way. I’ll fly into St. Louis from Chicago in the morning.

Going out of my way to give St. Louis numbers

I expect some pics!

^ at this point, if LH drops FRA I think BA starts LHR 5x week almost immediately.

FAA begins process to consolidate Lambert Airport to a single terminal

The FAA is conducting an environmental assessment as part of its plan to consolidate Terminals 1 and 2 into a single terminal. It would consolidate terminal security, access, and parking.

The assessment should be completed by early September.

https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/faa-b ... minal/amp/

^Brilliant! Glad to see it movi8ng forward.

TLDR: rambling observations of T2. The restaurants are crowded and understaffed.
They really need to over do it on the restaurant space on the new concourse. I flew out of T2 on the Wednesday after Christmas, arrived 3 hours early because I didn't want to take any chances with the winter weather / MO-X shuttle and then my flight was delayed by an hour. So of course I spent 4 hours analyzing T2. The sit down restaurants are popular. I went to the Shlafley / Pasta House restaurant, it was terrible. The tables were nearly full but it likely came down to lack of staffing to seat people and bring checks. Side tangent: we could probably use more order at the counter, pay first style fast casual restaurants like Grace Meat + 3. I have very little experience working in a restaurant but the process of paying a check seems to take way to much of a server's time.
The Blues and Budweiser restaurants were all completely full. CPK had a line onto the concourse and then some. Burger King is closed and getting replaced but I recall it being very popular in the past. Vino Volo had some seats open but I watched it for 15 minutes or so and never say an employee seat any customers. Three Kings has a seat yourself system which of course resulted in families hovering to try and grab a table.

Luckily other than that, there kind of seemed to be enough seating at various gates. I just really hope the new concourse is nothing like B here in Philly where they basically made every gate a restaurant and have a table and an iPad you can't turn off at every seat. It's a dystopian annoyance, resulted in way too few seats, and a lot of people standing or sitting on the floor. 

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jan 11, 2024

^ at this point, if LH drops FRA I think BA starts LHR 5x week almost immediately.

Why would LH drop FRA?  Did I miss something?  All I've heard is this flight is doing well beyond everyone at LH's expectations and that they wanted to add more flights but plane/scheduling/staffing all worked against doing so.

MRNHS wrote:

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jan 11, 2024

^ at this point, if LH drops FRA I think BA starts LHR 5x week almost immediately.

Why would LH drop FRA?  Did I miss something?  All I've heard is this flight is doing well beyond everyone at LH's expectations and that they wanted to add more flights but plane/scheduling/staffing all worked against doing so.

Driving thinking is that They haven’t expanded, used those lines, but expanded other stations or added new routes elsewhere. I think 3x is either understood to be or was even said by the airline to not be sustainable long term.

ldai_phs wrote: ↑

Jan 12, 2024

MRNHS wrote:

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jan 11, 2024

^ at this point, if LH drops FRA I think BA starts LHR 5x week almost immediately.

Why would LH drop FRA?  Did I miss something?  All I've heard is this flight is doing well beyond everyone at LH's expectations and that they wanted to add more flights but plane/scheduling/staffing all worked against doing so.

Driving thinking is that They haven’t expanded, used those lines, but expanded other stations or added new routes elsewhere. I think 3x is either understood to be or was even said by the airline to not be sustainable long term.

Good grief. NO ONE said LH is dropping STL. They are extremely busy flights for almost 2 years consecutively every month, even in the winter.

LH has a plane and pilot shortage, just alike all airlines right now. They have a gate shortage at FRA as well with 50 percent of their flights having no jet way gates and using exterior stairs and buses to board almost all EU flights to/from.

There was NEVER any discussion, thought or foreseen "not viable longterm" commitments or projections. Where the hell you pull this crap from. Stop posting on these boards unless you have documented proof to share, which in this case you don't.

Lufthansa just finished their checkin area with permanent signage in T2 and added twice their personel staff since summer 2023 in STL. The flights also are departing more on schedule.

According to the Wingtips Lounge that LH business class and first class use in STL, the airline has signed a new year contract for 2023. For what that's worth.

matguy70 wrote:

ldai_phs wrote: ↑

Jan 12, 2024

MRNHS wrote: Why would LH drop FRA?  Did I miss something?  All I've heard is this flight is doing well beyond everyone at LH's expectations and that they wanted to add more flights but plane/scheduling/staffing all worked against doing so.

Driving thinking is that They haven’t expanded, used those lines, but expanded other stations or added new routes elsewhere. I think 3x is either understood to be or was even said by the airline to not be sustainable long term.

Good grief. NO ONE said LH is dropping STL. They are extremely busy flights for almost 2 years consecutively every month, even in the winter.

LH has a plane and pilot shortage, just alike all airlines right now. They have a gate shortage at FRA as well with 50 percent of their flights having no jet way gates and using exterior stairs and buses to board almost all EU flights to/from.

There was NEVER any discussion, thought or foreseen "not viable longterm" commitments or projections. Where the hell you pull this crap from. Stop posting on these boards unless you have documented proof to share, which in this case you don't.

Lufthansa just finished their checkin area with permanent signage in T2 and added twice their personel staff since summer 2023 in STL. The flights also are departing more on schedule.

According to the Wingtips Lounge that LH business class and first class use in STL, the airline has signed a new year contract for 2023. For what that's worth.

I don’t think they will personally but that is the line of thinking for those who do / are concerned / post about this sorta thing on aviation forums

aprice wrote: ↑

Jan 12, 2024

TLDR: rambling observations of T2. The restaurants are crowded and understaffed.
They really need to over do it on the restaurant space on the new concourse. I flew out of T2 on the Wednesday after Christmas, arrived 3 hours early because I didn't want to take any chances with the winter weather / MO-X shuttle and then my flight was delayed by an hour. So of course I spent 4 hours analyzing T2. The sit down restaurants are popular. I went to the Shlafley / Pasta House restaurant, it was terrible. The tables were nearly full but it likely came down to lack of staffing to seat people and bring checks. Side tangent: we could probably use more order at the counter, pay first style fast casual restaurants like Grace Meat + 3. I have very little experience working in a restaurant but the process of paying a check seems to take way to much of a server's time.
The Blues and Budweiser restaurants were all completely full. CPK had a line onto the concourse and then some. Burger King is closed and getting replaced but I recall it being very popular in the past. Vino Volo had some seats open but I watched it for 15 minutes or so and never say an employee seat any customers. Three Kings has a seat yourself system which of course resulted in families hovering to try and grab a table.

Luckily other than that, there kind of seemed to be enough seating at various gates. I just really hope the new concourse is nothing like B here in Philly where they basically made every gate a restaurant and have a table and an iPad you can't turn off at every seat. It's a dystopian annoyance, resulted in way too few seats, and a lot of people standing or sitting on the floor. 

Pasta house is going to be replaced by peacemaker. Not exactly the type of food I’d expect in an airport but I know the place is popular. I think cali pizza kitchen is being replaced by Pick Up Stix (Asian). I know it’s going in somewhere, pretty sure it was the pizza kitchen slot. I’d guess it is next after shake shack. Then peacemaker later in the year.

stl international woks but it sure could use a bit of creativity once in awhile
ck out IND https://ftw.usatoday.com/2024/01/indianapolis-airport-basketball-court-pacers-nba-all-star

Frontier is adding nonstop flights to Phoenix starting April 10th!

4x a week Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday

Not sure april is when I would start flights to PHX just in time for it to start getting hot.. but I won’t complain about new routes… too much.

In frequent traveler news, I've been using the STL-OAK on SWA quite a bit, and it's been pretty packed each way every time.  Still hoping United starts STL-SFO again soon.

United is expanding from Dulles. We will be getting at least another daily flight. Not sure if they are sending bigger planes or not. Details should come out this weekend. Starts in May. It’s good to see United adding here, Dulles is the only route now with no mainline. Just need to get SFO back, but that also just said they are cutting SFO back in general so I doubt we see it this year.

There's an A330 in military grey parked on the tarmac so I looked up the tail, T-057, and it's a NATO plane flying from Eindhoven (EIN) to Goose Bay (YVR) but showing as diverted to STL.  Great circle path would place the aircraft well to the north of the US, seems odd that they diverted here? 

pdm_ad wrote: ↑

Jan 26, 2024

There's an A330 in military grey parked on the tarmac so I looked up the tail, T-057, and it's a NATO plane flying from Eindhoven (EIN) to Goose Bay (YVR) but showing as diverted to STL.  Great circle path would place the aircraft well to the north of the US, seems odd that they diverted here? 

Could have been a planned diversion. It is weird if almost landed at goose bay (a couple thousand feet from the ground) then came here. Id still guess it had to be planned

^Maybe they were planning to make multiple stops and conditions weren't adequate in Goose Bay but they had enough fuel to proceed, so they did? Wunderground is showing Goose Bay was cloudy at about that time, and there'd been snow off and on all night and all morning before it. That's not real specific. I think they were in Goose Bay about 11:15 local, more or less. Flightaware gives conditions there at 11:00 as VFR with few clouds at 2000, scattered at 4000, and overcast at 8000. By 11:35 things had deteriorated considerably to MVFR, with broken clouds at 4000 and less than half the visibility generally. Maybe things were just rotten when they shot their approach. I don't know how you really figure your alternate, but I expect your intended next leg makes a big difference. They went from here to El Paso. It's a pretty straight shot from Eindhoven to Goose Bay, St. Louis, and El Paso. We're a bit off a straight line, but not all that much. (May not add much more than a rounding error if I'm doing my measuring right.) Take off. Make a right at Brussels, and keep going for just under 6000 km. Might be we were just a convenient spot for a pit stop. Chicago is better. Maybe also Minneapolis. But then you have to deal with all that Chicago traffic, and who wants that on your secret military mission.

On the other hand, somebody got a picture of a howitzer on a truck on 55 yesterday. Maybe that was the source of the diversion. Housewarming gift. For Roswell. Could it be . . . #*@&$?

All right. I'm way too far down this silly rabbit hole. Would have been neat to see though.

New piece in Post about impact of Lambert expansion. Study: Lambert Airport impact on St. Louis area economy could grow by $5B by 2032 https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... ee9d3.html


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from 2019 to 2023, inflation was 19.2% and if we project 2% a year from 2024-2032 that's another 18% or 37.2% and yet the expected revenue growth is 18%?

this also counts the Boeing project happening, i dont know how this is a good case for building the terminal 

“Bayer recently asked that nonstops (to Frankfurt) be increased to five days a week from three days”

“The report said Bayer is also interested in Lambert eventually beginning nonstop service to São Paulo, Brazil to reach Bayer’s South American markets”

That'd be cool. What airline might be able to do that?

Any of them would be a stretch. The smallest business market with connection to São Paulo is Dallas.

United from Chicago, but not Denver.
American from Dallas, but not Chicago.
Delta from Atlanta, but no Detroit or Minneapolis.

My point is… not very likely.

LATAM doesn’t even fly to Chicago.