St. Louis Lambert Intl

A Legacy of Private Aviation

STL can trace its origins to 1909 with the balloon launching base of the Aero Club of St. Louis, the Permanent Aviation Field, and Dirigible Harbor. The following year, it hosted the first International Air Meet, attended by the Wright Brothers and President Theodore Roosevelt, who became the first U.S. President to fly on October 11th. The following year the Field was the takeoff point for the first parachute jump. However, in 1912 the lease on the land expired, and the grandstand was demolished. In June 1920, the Missouri Aeronautical Society leased a 170-acre field close to the original Field, naming it the St. Louis Flying Field. The push to renew aviation in St. Louis was in large part due to the efforts of Albert Bond Lambert, president of the Lambert Pharmaceutical Corporation, which made Listerene (he was also an Olympic silver medalist golfer in the 1904 Summer Games). This led to the renaming of the Field in 1923, the Lambert-St. Louis Flying Field. In 1925, Lambert purchased the Field and added hangars and a passenger terminal. In the late 1920s, STL became the first airport with an air traffic control system (they communicated with pilots by waving flags). Furthermore, in 1927 Charles Lindbergh was flying airmail from the airfield, and he left the airport for New York a week before his world-changing flight to Paris. In 1928, the City of St. Louis purchased the airport from Lambert for $2 million, and STL became one of the first airports in the U.S. to be municipally owned. In 1930, the airport was renamed the Lambert-St. Louis Municipal Airport, with the first terminal building opening in 1933. In the 1930s, the airport was served by Robertson Air Lines, Marquette Airlines, Eastern Air Lines, and TWA (which was then called Transcontinental & Western Air). Furthermore, in 1942 a $4.5 million bond was passed to build a new terminal and expand the airport by 867 acres. The airport can trace its military background to 1925 when it became home to Naval Air Station (NAS) St. Louis, a Naval Air Reserve facility. During WWII, the facility became an active-duty installation, while the airport became a manufacturing base for the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation (now Boeing) and Curtiss-Wright. The NAS reverted to a reserve installation after the war, and it closed in 1958 when most of its facilities were purchased by the Missouri Air National Guard. At that point, it became the Lambert Field Air National Guard Base (although some facilities were retained for non-flying use by the Naval Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve. As for civilian use, Ozark Air Lines began to service the airport in 1950, and by the end of the decade, it established its only hub at the airport and continued its rapid growth through the mid-1970s. In 1956 a new terminal building opened, with a three-domed design (with a fourth added in 1965 with the passage of a $200 million bond), which preceded those at JFK in New York and Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. The cost of the terminal was $7.2 million. In 1957, the airport was serviced by TWA, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Ozark, Eastern Air Lines, Braniff International Airways, and Central Airlines. In 1971, the airport was renamed Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. In 1977 the runways were lengthened, the gates were increased to 81, and the capacity was boosted by 50% to $290 million. In 1982, extensions of Concourse C for TWA (at 120,000 square feet and $20 million) and Concourse D for Ozark (at 210,000 square feet and $46 million) were completed. At that point in time, they were the two dominant carriers at STL, with American and Eastern in tow. The realities of airline deregulation after 1978 made STL the most viable option for a profitable TWA hub. By 1982, the airport comprised 20% of TWA's domestic capacity. At first, the terminal was initially not big enough to handle all the traffic from the airline, so temporary terminals, mobile lounges, and airstairs were used. In 1985 Concourse D was completed, allowing TWA to begin transatlantic service to London, Frankfurt, and Paris. In 1985 TWA bought Ozark, whose hub was operating from STL Concourses B, C, and D. The merger caused TWA to control 80% of all the traffic at STL by 1986. While TWA declared bankruptcy in 1992, they began to rely even more heavily on STL, which brought about more growth for the airport, as passengers served grew from 19.9 million in 1993 to over 30 million in 2000 (STL became the eight-busiest airport in the U.S. by flights). This brought about delays, which were compounded when bad weather struck and deemed some of the runways unusable. In response, a 9,000-foot runway (11/29) was built at the cost of $1.1 billion, the most expensive public works program in the city's history (the cost is because seven major roads had to be moved, while 2,000 homes, six churches and four schools in Bridgeton had to be destroyed). Work began in 1998 and persisted through the airport's decline after the 9/11 attacks, which generally plagued the airline industry. American purchased TWA in April 2001, and TWA's last flight was on December 1st, 2001. The original plan had been for STL to be a reliever hub for American's primary hubs at Chicago-O'Hare and Dallas/Fort Worth. However, the aftereffects of 9/11 meant that American no longer needed a reliever hub in STL, as its other hubs became less congested. Within just a few years, the airport was only servicing 20.4 million people per year, and transatlantic flights were discontinued by late 2003. Back on the military front, the U.S. Air Force announced in 2006 that the 131st Fighter Winger of the Missouri National Guard would be turned into the 131st Bomb Wing. The aircraft on-site were relocated, as were the pilots and maintainers. As such, Lambert Field Air National Guard Base was formally closed on June 13th, 2009, after an 86-year run. Runway 11/29 (which had been under construction since 1998) was finally completed in 2006 and officially opened on April 13th. The Great Recession of 2008 put further pressure on American, which shifted more flights from mainline to regional. By 2009, STL was only serving 12.8 million passengers, and the hub was closed by the summer of 2010. This gave SouthWest Airlines the opportunity to expand operations, and it continues to dominate STL to this day. In late 2016 city officials announced that research showed that travelers might be confused by the name and sought to emphasize "St. Louis" by renaming the airport "St. Louis International Airport at Lambert Field. This was opposed by descendants of Albert Bond Lambert, who argued it would minimize the man's contributions to the airport and aviation in general. A bargain was struck, and the airport was renamed St. Louis Lambert International Airport.