St. Louis Lambert Airport's flight loss exceeds other hubs

ST. LOUIS -- Industry data support what travelers have suspected for months: St. Louis' Lambert Airport is not nearly as busy as it used to be.

Lambert lost a greater percentage of flights and available seats over the last two years than any other large hub in the country, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Monday. The newspaper based its report on newly acquired industry data.

Since 2001, Lambert lost nearly 46 percent of its weekly flights and 60 percent of its available flight seats, newly acquired industry data show.

By comparison, large hubs nationwide lost 11.1 percent of their weekly flights and just under 15 percent of their available seats over the last two years.

Lambert has lost 2,028 weekly flights -- going from 4,418 to 2,390. The St. Louis airport lost 289,050 seats -- from 478,836 to 189,786.

"It's extremely apparent that if not for September 11th, 2001, you wouldn't have seen the vast changes we made in St. Louis," American spokesman Tim Wagner said. "No one can predict what would have happened otherwise, but it's specifically because of September 11th."

and other factors related to that that led to what we had to do in St. Louis."

Also hurting was the demise of St. Louis-based Trans World Airlines, which built Lambert into its midcontinent hub decades ago. TWA filed for bankruptcy for the final time in early 2001.

American bought TWA's assets and agreed to retain St. Louis as a hub city, but Lambert came in third behind larger Dallas-Fort Worth International and Chicago's O'Hare International airports.

American steadily reduced the number of large jets flying out of St. Louis. From July 2001 to July 2003, American slashed 41 percent of its daily departures -- a figure that doesn't include the service picked up by its regional partners using smaller planes.

November's schedule cuts left St. Louis as a "regional" hub, and only a fraction of the lost flights have been replaced by other air carriers.

The Post-Dispatch obtained flight figures last week from Reconnecting America, as well as the Official Airline Guide, an independent flight monitoring group. Both groups' figures were based on domestic flights going in and out of America's airports.

Since American's cuts two months ago, crowds, airplane size and flight options have diminished, travelers say. Even the airport's shoeshine company plans to close its stands at the end of September.

Wagner said American recognizes that Lambert isn't the travel force it once was, but it still serves a vital link to the Midwest.

"We've said all along that although it's a smaller hub for us, it's still a hub," Wagner said. "St. Louis is still extremely important for us. Our main thing in this is that though it's a smaller hub, it caters to people who live and work and do business in St. Louis."