At 07:56 AM 9/8/2004 -0700, Clay Wardlow wrote: >Why is Missouri such a black hole when it comes to hub operations at MCI >or STL? Wasn't MCI carefully designed to keep all gates near the curb? That's great for O&D traffic -- but deadly for hub traffic. DFW has the same design, but the train among terminals helps some. >Aside from TWA/AA and Vanguard, what other airlines have tried to have >major operations in the Show Me State? Why did they fail? Southwest has fairly major activities at STL. They would say that they don't have any hubs, but STL might be one of their more-equal non-hubs. I don't know how STL compares for LUV with MDW, BNA, PHX, or their other non-hubs. But it can't be that bad -- it's not like SFO, which had so many weather delays that they abandoned it in favor of OAK and SJC. Midwest (Express) tried for a while to build up operations at MCI, but I haven't paid much attention to them for a while. They seemed to have enough troubles besides any complications from trying to squeeze money out of MCI -- or Omaha, one of their other experiments outside of MKE. >Clay - SEA Nick