If any of you are lucky enough to have to spend some time Tuesday getting voluntarily strip searched before heading off to your connecting flight to a real airport at Lambert tomorrow, be sure to check out the fancy new remodel of baggage carousels one and two! We know you’re excited! The remodels baggage carousels now feature higher ceilings and more light, but fair warning, they couldn’t get rid of that religious guy and his little desk who thinks he’s better than you because he knows Jesus…or satan or Tom Cruise. We’ve actually never stopped to ask him.

Lambert officials removed the construction walls Sunday night and by Tuesday morning, travelers will be able to exit the Concourse C-D security checkpoint and catch a close-up glimpse of what the airport is striving to accomplish over the next year.

The height of the ceiling has been raised about 10 inches. But the recessed and circular “cove” lighting gives it an even more open feel.

Also exciting is Lambert’s work in replacing all the Grade B/BB plywood with all new A/B grade plywood. It looks really nice. Not “replacing the f*cking windows eight months later” but still really really nice.

“Tomorrow’s a big day,” [Lambert Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge] said. “For the last three months, we’ve gone through the heaviest phase of construction in this whole project. … We had the long detour where customers coming in off the D Concourse had to exit through the B.”

Not sure how to tell Rhonda this, but those people weren’t grumbling about having to exit at the B concourse, they were just grumbling about exiting in St. Louis through crappy airport. You should have unveiled the changes yesterday and announced the place is haunted (and then whisper “with weird people, grumpy TSA agents and fat guys that can’t figure out the departure drop off zone.”)

via STLToday

If you’ll recall, Lambert Airport got wind-raped pretty hard last Friday. After getting its windows blown out and roof ripped off, it was back to full capacity yesterday, a mere 5 days later. The Cape Girardeau Airport has however been closed since Sunday because of puddles.

Cape Air has been closed since Sunday.

The airport was temporarily shut down because there is a large amount of standing water on the runway.

We’re not saying the puddles aren’t a legitimate problem, but when your airport is closed over the same things that little girls like to jump in with their rain boots, maybe don’t drop that news after another local airport got it’s face ripped off.

We will admit that puddles are an interesting foe. There’s only two options to go over them: make yourself look like at 6 year old trying to jump real far, or a ballerina, neither of which are real impressive to the ladies. Not all of us have a sexy body distracting enough to pull those moves off. That being said, puddles do allow for the occasional up-skirt reflection. But now they’re taking out our airports?! It would be a shame if Cape Girardeau was the place where our tenuous relationship with the puddles degraded in to violence*.

* violence = a mop

via KMOV

Friday evening, strong spring storms rampaged through North St. Louis, crippling Lambert Airport and sealing off the major St. Louis escape route. The brimstone should arrive by this Wednesday to take the rest of us out.

“The storm caused significant damage to the airport,” said St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.

There were nine sightings of a possible tornado or tornadoes in St. Louis County. The KSDK camera showed extensive damage to residences and other structures near the airport.

Passengers were hit with flying glass and debris as winds ripped off part of the roof in the airport’s C concourse, KSDK said.

“All the windows were busted. … The airport looks like a war zone,” Elizabeth Rastberger, 32, told CNN’s iReport.

When officials finally got on the scene they reported the status as “normal” up until they visited the much nicer East Terminal and realized that it looked like the rest of Lambert. “Ah. Now I see it. Yeah, this is pretty busted, we should shut it down…I guess the other terminal should be shut down too until we can figure out which part of it was destroyed by the storm and which part already looked like this.” probably said one official.

“The National Weather Service will be surveying the tornado damage over the weekend to determine the number and intensity of tornadoes that occurred,” its St. Louis office said.

Who cares? If a car ran in to you on the street and broke your arms and legs, would you want more people working on getting you better or would want some people working on you and a couple of others trying to figure out how big the truck was? Just come back and say it was 9 tornados…or come back and say it was more like 62. Neither number will change anything.

Meanwhile, the Mayor, Charles Dooley and some airport official held a press conference to talk about the damage. Other than someone’s cell phone going off causing the Mayor to give someone the “Bitch please!” look, it was pretty uninteresting…until the Lambert Airport official came to the mic, apparently rocking the same shirt she weathered the storm in because it looked like the freaking tornado ripped the fabric right off her shoulders!

This lady woke up this morning knowing she had this press conference, and she said to herself “Bring your A-game outfit today because it’s your time to shine! …Should I go with the standard business suit? Nah, this event is bigger than that and you’re going to be the star! We know what we have to do…time to rock the weird white dress shirt with the huge collar and the shoulders cut out that have little shoulder collars!” She thought she had nailed it…right up until she saw the “Girl WTF you wearin’?!” look on Charles Dooley’s face:

Total. Disaster.

…oh…and damn shame about the airport getting trashed too.

via CNN

His Mayorness, Francis Slay, announced yesterday that Lambert Airport is going 100% smoke free starting on January 2nd, 2011. The move conicides with the earlier removal of major airline hubs, any semblance of security, and decent flights that don’t involve  you going the wrong direction for 6 hours to get to a real airport to make your connecting flight.

[T]he city will close — and eventually tear down — the five airport smoking lounges on Jan. 2, the day most public places in the city must go smoke-free.

[Mayor] Slay had said last year he would do as much. Then, late last week, he said in an interview with the Post-Dispatch that the city had worked out conflicts with the county smoking ban, which exempts the lounges.

He said his first priority is the health of travelers and airport workers, but the move is also about the city’s reputation.

“The image we want to project is a city that is progressive and health conscious,” Slay said.

Good move. We’d hate to have a reputation here in St. Louis that it isn’t healthy to live here. We think that maybe we should just let people heading in to the city take a pitstop for a quick smoke. Give them a blindfold too, and then send them out in to the mean St. Louis streets.

via STLToday

According to USAToday, a new interactive art exhibit is being installed in to Lambert Airport.

The feature is called Windows on St. Louis. It’s a glass-walled gallery where six cultural attractions have filled the windows with art and memorabilia.

Touch-screen computer technology allows people to take a digital tour of the Gateway Arch grounds. Other sections highlight celebrated museums, neighborhoods and a cathedral.

You wanna know something thats going to shock you?  We are 100% behind this idea.  Now we haven’t yet seen one of the displays, but we are assuming the displays are nice, work well, and show the good parts of St. Louis, which in case you were wondering is anything not too far north, east, super west or south…basically we are talking about a 1 mile tall strip that runs from Busch Stadium to Skinker and then the Loop.

Here’s the problem with it though.  The “art exhibit” runs through December, because apparently after December St. Louis isn’t work promoting?!  Why would you make “art” that promotes St. Louis to travelers and then take it down after a few months?  Why does this kind of crap always go on in St. Louis, something cool happens and then we yank it?!  Can’t we have anything good for longer than a few months?!?!?

Oh wait, did the art just come with Matt Holliday?