Lambert-St. Louis International Airport is expecting continued strong growth in passenger demand as the peak summer travel season kicks off with the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Lambert is on a 10 percent growth trend for 2016 in passenger enplanements.
Lambert’s airlines are responding to the strong increase in passenger activity with the introduction of more destinations, more seats and some upgrades in aircraft to certain cities through the summer.
Additional flights and bigger aircraft this summer account for 2,000 more available seats per day, which is an eight percent increase year over year. Lambert will have 255 daily departures from St. Louis beginning in June. That’s an increase of seven flights per day versus last year.
This year, Lambert will hit peak service to 70 non-stop destinations. That includes new non-stop service from St. Louis to Oakland, CA (OAK) on Southwest Airlines beginning June 5. Southwest will also begin serving Cleveland, OH (CLE) and Portland, OR (PDX) that same day for a total of 103 daily flights this summer to 43 destinations. In addition to its new destinations beginning this June, Southwest has added six other non-stop destinations since the start of summer of 2015: Austin, TX (AUS); Orange County, CA (SNA); Little Rock, AR (LIT); Pittsburgh, PA (PIT); Des Moines, IA (DSM) and Wichita, KS (ICT). Connecting passenger activity is on an 18 percent growth trend in 2016 with 92 percent of connecting passengers on Southwest.
Other destination additions since a year ago includes Alaska Airlines’ service to Portland, OR (PDX). This summer, Alaska will be expanding its second daily flight to Seattle, WA (SEA) to 7-days a week. Frontier Airlines also added three flights/week to Atlanta, GA (ATL) this spring. American Airlines has added an additional daily flight to Los Angeles, CA (LAX) this summer. Many airlines have increased capacity to some of the key cities in their networks.
The top increases in seat capacity from St. Louis versus the summer of 2015 include Denver, CO (Den)-Frontier Airlines, Southwest, United Airlines; Oklahoma City, OK (OKC)-Southwest; Austin, TX (AUS)-Southwest; Tulsa, OK (TUL)- Southwest; Los Angeles (LAX)-American, Southwest; Atlanta (ATL)- Delta, Frontier, Southwest; and Orlando, FL (MCO) Frontier, Southwest.
Even with additional seat capacity, many airlines are forecasting heavy passenger load factors, especially this upcoming Memorial Day Weekend. The airline industry is projecting a record level of airline travel this summer of 2.5 million passengers per day, an increase of 95,000 or 4 percent.
Most airlines recommend passengers arrive a minimum of 90 minutes before domestic departures; two hours before international departures. Wait times for check-in and security will vary by airport, by checkpoint and by time of the day. Infrequent travelers, travelers with young children or passengers with large amounts of luggage may want to allow for more time to get through ticketing and checkpoints during the summer travel season.
