STL: An Airport in Past Tense

St. Louis once was the gateway to the west, a bustling, bursting, wheeling and dealing city where commerce moved faster than the raging Mississippi River at flood stage. Home-grown McDonald Douglas was an aviation leader, based at Lambert Field, STL.  The airport itself served as a major US hub for airline industry pioneer Trans World Airlines.  Famed St. Louis aviator Charles Lindbergh organized the first US transcontinental passenger flight in 1929, and Lambert Field STL became a stopping point along the 12-stop, 60-hour journey known as The Lindbergh Line.  And the main terminal, a masterpiece of airport grand hall design in the 1950s, inspired similar terminals at New York JFK airport and Paris Charles De Gaulle.

Suffice it to say that much of what was great about Lambert Field STL is stated most accurately today in past tense, while the present and future are mixed.  And apart from the soaring design of the Grand Hall, STL today seems like an afterthought build on top of a regret.

STL:  The Details

• Ground Transportation. Forget your GPS when arriving by car and pay close attention to the jumble of directional signs or you may wind up at the wrong entrance.  Arriving from the city, I always feel very claustrophobic as we drive on a tight feeder road with close building on the right and the MetroLink overhead. To retrieve a parked car, get a rental car bus or reach other ground transportation requires a confusing sojourn through long low-ceiling claustrophobic-inducing connecting corridors, hard-to-find ramps and occasional stairs.  MetroLink rail service is available from both STL terminals on the Red Line, operating frequently from early morning until 1 am.

  

• Terminals. Easy to remember, Terminal Two for Southwest; One terminal for the rest. It will be hard to forget if you get off at the wrong terminal, as it’s one mile and a ten-minute shuttle ride away.  Entering the main terminal departures floor alleviates the claustrophobia, and the grandeur of the original 1950s terminal is evident.  Unfortunately, today’s check-in areas clutter this main floor and detract significantly from the original design.  To reach departure concourse A and B, it’s down to the dungeons and that closed-in feeling.  Unfortunately, I haven’t flown Southwest here, so I can’t say anything about the newer Southwest terminal.  Maybe someone else can contribute.
• Best Restaurant. Not that there’s much choice, but there is no doubt:  Mike Shannon’s, on Concourse B.  A good-but-often-full bar offers the fastest service in this sit-down venue.  At dinner time, the line is deep, the wait long and getting a seat nearly impossible.  Once you get in, appetizers, salads and burgers are priced comparably to upscale casual dining locations, in the low teens.  Steaks range into the $40s. Past tense side note: the original downtown Mike Shannon’s location closed in 2016, following a long property dispute between the Cardinal’s broadcaster and the team. Memorabilia from the site was auctioned, including a 1963 autographed jersey from Stan Musial’s last game that fetched more than $11,000.

  

• Good News at STL. Recent renovations have improved the concourse functionality and selection of food outlets.  International flight service expanded when WOW Air, Iceland’s low-cost transatlantic airline, began connecting STL to Keflavik International Airport (KEF) in Iceland, then on to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Dublin, Copenhagen and more. However, based on reviews by Travel and Leisure magazine, that flight service seem more WOE than WOW.

  

For the Active Traveler

With two terminals one mile apart and  no walkway between them, active travelers are out of luck.  Compounding the problem, the concourses in the main terminal are separated by unsecured areas, so walking is limited to looping around one narrow, low-ceilinged concourse that is home to your assigned departure gate.   Feeling depressed by that recurring claustrophobia (did I mention the low ceilings?), I didn’t measure the potential walking distance on my trusty Garmin Vivoactive HR.  (But I did have time to sync my Garmin with my Garmin Connect I-Phone app, and update the 23-mile early-morning exercise bike ride I experience after a sleepless night at the airport Marriott!)

A Lucky, Misdirected Discovery  

Taking a GPS-directed wrong turn out of STL, I wound up circling on an outer belt road.  Around the back side of the airport I stumbled upon the Boeing Store, located on the end-cap of a non-descripts strip mall.  On a whim, I pulled in and went shopping for the younger boys of our family. The store features a great collection of Boeing model planes, lots of company wearables and gear, and (at least on this day) a plethora of clearance items perfect for the boys. Happy with three sets of Boeing airplane trading cards and two foam airplanes, I resumed my trek, sure to be a hero when arriving home.

Three Infamous St. Louis Losses

Just as past tense seems to best describe STL, the city has achieved certain notoriety for some high-profile loses.  Among them.

• NFL Football Cardinals. In my youth, Jim Hart was the strong-armed quarterback of the St. Louis Football Cardinals. I remember distinctly how announcers always inserted the “football” into the verbal description, perhaps to prevent confusion caused by grainy black-and-white television.  Those Cardinals moved on to Arizona in 1987, among many NFL team moves during the 1980s.
• NFL Football Rams. After losing the Cardinals, the city and football backers convinced Los Angeles owner Georgia Frontiere that there were greener pastures for the financially-troubled Rams in the heartland.  Thus, in 1995, football traditionalists struggled to adapt to the St. Louis Rams (just as we did the Arizona Cardinals).  Alas, all good things must end in STL, and the Rams moved back to Los Angeles in 2016.
• Budweiser and Anheuser Busch. The Busch family and Budweiser were once synonymous with St. Louis. But no more.  While the company maintains a down-sized operation in and around St. Louis, the 2008 purchase of the company by InBev means Belgian decision-makers control the beer that changed its name from Budweiser to America as an Olympics promotion.  Several Busch family members probably shifted in their final St. Louis-area resting places when the combined AB-InBev purchased SABMiller and Anheuser Busch’s perennial American brewing rival, Miller.

Final Thoughts and Disclosure

As I was proofreading this, I thought to myself, “Wow, you were sort of negative.”  Recognizing that I can be a grumpy 60-something at times, I checked my own observations with others who had posted Lambert STL observations to a variety of ratings sites over the past 12 months.  To paraphrase the NFL:  The ruling on Lambert Field STL is confirmed.

Read and See More

STL and the St. Louis area played an important role in the development and expansion of passenger airline service within the US.  If you’re interested in Luck Lindy, The Lindbergh Line, TWA, McDonald Douglass, and other aviation history, consider exploring:

• St. Louis Lambert Field, Wikipeadia.  A good representation of the history of Lambert Field, with other links to aviation history.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Lambert_International_Airport
• The Spirit of St. Louis. Charles Lindbergh’s Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography was published in 1953, and remains a great read for fans of flying, adventure and tales of individual achievement.
• Flying the Lindbergh Line, Then and Now, by Robert Kirk.  Join licensed pilot Robert Kirk in reliving the US transcontinental flying experience that was the original mail-and-passenger route named the Lindbergh Line.  Of course, it’s available on Amazon and other online sources.
• Vintage TWA Posters. As long-distance air travel became possible for more people, TWA commissioned artist David Klein to produce a series of promotional posters, encouraging the adventurous to experience flying to exotic locations. Today, these iconic posters often sell for thousands of dollars. You’ll find examples in the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, and a more complete set of Klein’s work on his estate’s home page.