#lambertfield

[sentinelchicken]

This was the start of a bit of a traffic jam at St. Louis Lambert Field when I was returning home to Dallas from eclipse chasing in southern Illinois back in 2017.⠀ ⠀ I remember back in the 80s and 90s when STL was a beehive of activity as the home base for Ozark and TWA (TWA bought Ozark in 1986). If it weren’t for Southwest, Lambert would be a supremely depressing ghost town. Southwest began service to Lambert in 1985- that year, TWA opened up trans-Atlantic service to London, Paris and Frankfurt from St. Louis. I remember the TWA 747s and L-1011s at the end of one of the concourses back then! That same year, TWA accounted for nearly 57% of the passengers at Lambert. ⠀ ⠀ The following year was when TWA bought Ozark and the airport averaged about 20 million passengers a year well into the 1990s. Lambert’s peak came in 2000 just before the TWA acquisition by American Airlines- it was the dominant hub in the TWA network with 515 daily departures and nearly 31 million passengers passed through the airport. ⠀ ⠀ 2010 was the year the last remnants of the TWA hub were shut down by American and American was down to only 36 flights a day and passenger traffic through the airport as a whole was down to just over 12 million for that year, the lowest it had been in decades in St. Louis. I had read somewhere that St. Louis is the largest city in the United States that doesn’t have an international flight to Europe.⠀ ⠀ Now? It’s a shell of its former self. Southwest has 61% of the passenger load out of the airport and for the last few years the passenger numbers have been just over 7.5 million/year. ⠀ #Avgeek #Southwest #SouthwestAirlines #Boeing #737 #aviation #aircraft #planeporn #KSTL #STL #StLouis #Missouri #LambertField #airport #planespotting #airlines #megaplane #instaplane #instagramaviation #splendid_transport #instaaviation #aviationlovers #aviationphotography #flight #AvGeekNation #AvgeekSchoolofKnowledge #SWApics (at St. Louis Lambert International Airport) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4yoevKB4hV/?igshid=y0tmrmcewgne

[sentinelchicken]

Beat the Texas heat with this flashback from 2010 on a snowy December afternoon at Lambert St. Louis! Southwest began 737-300 services in December 1984 as the launch customer along with USAir. Both airlines each ordered 10 737-300s with options for 20 each in March 1981. The -300 was the most successful variant of the 737-300/400/500 family with the prototype rolling out at Renton in 17 January 1984 and the last 737-300 being delivered to Air New Zealand on 17 December 1999. The 737-300 is near synonymous with Southwest, having operated nearly 200 in the airline’s history. That comes out to nearly 20% of the 737-300 production (18% to be exact) having flown in the colors of Southwest Airlines. #Avgeek #Southwest #SouthwestAirlines #Boeing #737 #N314SW #aviation #aircraft #planeporn #KSTL #STL #StLouis #Missouri #LambertField #airport #planespotting #airlines #megaplane #instaplane #instagramaviation #splendid_transport #instaaviation #aviationlovers #aviationphotography #flight #Avgeekery #AvgeekSchoolofKnowledge (at St. Louis Lambert International Airport)

[sentinelchicken]

Something a little different, here’s a Cape Air Cessna 402 heading out from St. Louis Lambert Field. Cape Air was started by Daniel Wolf in 1989 with a single route between Boston and Provincetown on Cape Cod with eight employees, a single aircraft, and 8000 passengers carried in that first year. Today Cape Air has about 93 aircraft serving 43 destinations, many of them under Essential Air Service contract. Carrying over 800,000 passengers daily with over 550 flights, they are the largest independent regional airline in the United States. At St. Louis, Cape Air operates EAS routes to Cape Girardeau, MO, Fort Leonard Wood, MO, Kirksville, MO, Marion, IL, Quincy, IL, and Owensboro, KY. Of the airline’s 93 aircraft, 83 of them are Cessna 402s that seat nine passengers. #Avgeek #CapeAir #Cessna #Cessna402 #N499CA #aviation #aircraft #planeporn #KSTL #STL #LambertField #airport #planespotting #airlines #megaplane #instaplane #instagramaviation #splendid_transport #instaaviation #aviationlovers #aviationphotography #flight #Avgeekery #AvgeekSchoolofKnowledge (at St. Louis Lambert International Airport)

[sentinelchicken]

This was the start of a bit of a traffic jam at St. Louis Lambert Field when I was returning home to Dallas from eclipse chasing in southern Illinois. Much to my surprise, there quite a few fellow astronomy enthusiasts on my flight home and while we waited, we were all sharing our photos of the totality and our own experiences with the locations we had chosen to watch the eclipse. I remember back in the 80s and 90s when STL was a beehive of activity as the home base for Ozark and TWA (TWA bought Ozark in 1986). If it weren’t for Southwest, Lambert would be a supremely depressing ghost town. Southwest began service to Lambert in 1985- that year, TWA opened up trans-Atlantic service to London, Paris and Frankfurt from St. Louis. I remember the TWA 747s and L-1011s at the end of one of the concourses back then! That same year, TWA accounted for nearly 57% of the passengers at Lambert. The following year was when TWA bought Ozark and the airport averaged about 20 million passengers a year well into the 1990s. Lambert’s peak came in 2000 just before the TWA acquisition by American Airlines- it was the dominant hub in the TWA network with 515 daily departures and nearly 31 million passengers passed through the airport. Now? It’s a shell of its former self. Southwest has 53% of the passenger load out of the airport and for the last few years the passenger numbers have been just over 6 million/year. #Avgeek #aviation #aircraft #planeporn #KSTL #STL #LambertField #airport #planespotting #airlines #megaplane #instaplane #instagramaviation #Avgeekery #SWApic #Southwest #Boeing #737 #AvGeekSchoolofKnowledge #splendid_transport (at St. Louis Lambert International Airport)