At MCI don't forget Eastern, Braniff II, and to some weaker extent USAir(ways) I flew threw MCI once going to and from ICT on US 5 years back. As Nick stated it is designed for O&D and walking right to the gate. As I recall the security stands were set up for a gate, or a couple of gates at a time, so I had to exit and enter security just to change planes between DCA and ICT. That was 1999 and not too bad, I'd hate to do it today..... There are I thought 3 different terminals at MCI and WN was in a different one. Maybe the others are laid out better ala DFW with central checkpoints for the terminal. I sure hope so. Shawn ***America's Volunteer Firefighters, the best bargain in municipal government*** -----Original Message----- From: The Airline List [mailto:AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nick Laflamme Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 11:08 AM To: AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Show Me the black hole 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