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

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

So apparently the best way to get through the security at Lambert Airport without getting scanned or allowing the high-school dropout TSA agent to get to third base is to…wait for it…just run. Somewhere Osama Bin Laden is face-palming right now. The countless hours of research that yielded the “shoe bomb” could have been better spent just buying good non-bomb running shoes and just hold the bomb in front of you and take off in to the airport when confronted.

A traveler at Lambert Airport triggers a security alert then disappears in the east terminal. As a result, the terminal was cleared for nearly an hour.

TSA says no one missed their flights this morning. Planes were kept on the ground to wait for those passengers late to their gates.

When asked how someone who, as the TSA themselves are saying “did not complete the screening process” was allowed to simply get away, the only reply was that the situation wasn’t a big deal and the man was harmless. Seriously. That’s what they told a KMOV reporter. The Lambert TSA, who find security serious enough to grope children and revoke citizen’s rights, looked for a guy that just walked away from their security checkpoint for 45 minutes and then just stopped saying “Eh. It’s probably fine.”

TSA tells News 4 the man didn’t “complete the screening process”. They wouldn’t tell us exactly what that means, but tell us the man was not a serious threat based on his behavior[,] a behavior described as normal.

Not a serious threat based on his “normal” behavior?! So what? He was a middle aged white guy not wearing a turban or shrieking jihad-type stuff? What’s the point of the groping or scanning if we can just walk up and have the TSAs eyeball you as “normal” and let you through? It’s so great to hear that after years of overly-aggressive security checks just to get on a plane Lambert International is the first airport in the nation to go with the new “Velvet Rope” method of security: “Yo! Lemme look at cho…k. You’re cool. Next! What is dat?! Dat ain’t normal, get outa here! You’re wife looks normal though…come on through sweet cheeks.”

Also, every other Wednesday is now Lamber Security Ladies Nights! Girls in dresses and high heels are pre-qualified as “normal”. Also be on the lookout for some upcoming appearances by DJ SweatyFatGuyGrabbingYourCrotch for the not-so-normal fellas sponsored by Smirnoff Ice!

via KMOV

Our friends at JoeSportsFan.com and KFNS.com just released their expose on the absolute crappiness of the Lambert Airport sports shop “Hometown Favorites”. Summery? Pedro Guerrero is prominently displayed. Pretty much all you need to know to see where this is going.

Its no surprise of course. Airports in general are set in their own little world. A scary world where an 87 year old woman can take down a plane with a pair of safety scissors, a Burger King Whopper with Cheese costs $9.45 and Mark Mulder is still punching out major league hitters rather than sitting at home with a stain on his shirt yelling at his shoulder.

Not only that, but we aren’t talking about just any airport, we are talking about Lambert airport. When the rest of the world’s airports have gone with new LCD monitors and carpet that doesn’t look like my 8th grade trapper-keeper, Lambert says no!”We like big giant blue monitors, and the carpet is an homage to the opening sequence of Saved by the Bell thank you very much! Hey wait! What are all these planes doing here? Why is this one going to some place people want to go to, like Las Vegas?! …oh. It has a 6 hour layover in New York? Ok. That sounds more like the ‘Lambert Way’”.

Full Story @ KFNS.com

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?