Tuesday, 9 January 2007

If you build it, people still won't come

Today’s USA Today reports on metropolitan St. Louis’ two biggest white elephants: Runway 11 at Lambert and the whole of MidAmerica. I’d find them more tolerable if the excess capacity translated into low airfares, but the discounters in St. Louis either have limited (Southwest, Midwest) or virtually nonexistent (Allegiant) networks—so unless the destination is Vegas or Orlando, most travelers would be better off at a real hub like Detroit or Memphis, instead of paying hub prices while living at the wrong end of a spoke.

# By Chris Lawrence @ 9:33 pm CST [Permalink] « (0)
Manual TrackBack URL for this entry: https://blog.lordsutch.com/tb.cgi/3693
Tags: , Transportation, Travel
 

6 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.
[Permalink] 1. Rick Almeida wrote @ Wed, 10 Jan 2007, 9:31 am CST:

Wow, I’ve lived 2 hours from STL since 1998, flown out of Lambert dozens of times, and I’ve never even heard of MidAmerica.

In other news, saw on the jobs table that you had 2 campus visits – good luck!

 
[Permalink] 2. Len Cleavelin wrote @ Wed, 10 Jan 2007, 12:20 pm CST:

When Lambert expanded, it was one of TWA‘s hubs. I’m sure a big part of this problem is that hindsight is 20/20—nobody, back in the late ‘90s really expected TWA to go belly up. OTOH, WTF they didn’t suspend construction of the runway after 9/11, when it was really clear that commercial aviation in the US was taking a bad hit, is a real puzzler. I suspect that they really didn’t want to lose the jobs.

As for Mid-America, I’ve never understood why that was built. Since it shares facilities with Scott AFB, I’ve suspected an Air Farce boondoggle myself. Then again, as a Navy veteran, I’m always going to blame the Air Farce whenever I can.

:-)

 
[Permalink] 3. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Wed, 10 Jan 2007, 10:29 pm CST:

Thanks, Rick… I certainly need it ☺. How goes the market for you?

 
[Permalink] 4. Rick Almeida wrote @ Fri, 12 Jan 2007, 1:02 pm CST:

You’ll be glad to hear this, I hope, because I think we tend to apply for many of the same jobs – I landed a TT job at an institution comparable to the ones you’re visiting around Thanksgiving time, which made for a very relaxing and enjoyable holiday. Now I just have to avoid getting embroiled in a grades-for-crack scandal before I leave MO. :)

 
[Permalink] 5. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Fri, 12 Jan 2007, 1:52 pm CST:

Congratulations! It’s always a good day in SN land when a reader gets a job—even if it turns out to be one that I wanted! ☺

 
[Permalink] 6. Rick Almeida wrote @ Fri, 12 Jan 2007, 5:05 pm CST:

Thanks, man!

 
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Signifying Nothing formerly featured the stylings of Brock Sides, a left-leaning philosopher turned network administrator currently residing in Memphis, Tennessee who now blogs at Battlepanda, and Robert Prather, a libertarian-leaning conservative economist and occasional contributor at OTB.

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