"Travelers play waiting game at St. Louis airport"

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Travelers play waiting game at airport
By Elisa Crouch and Jeremy Kohler
The St. Louis (MO) Post-Dispatch


Air travelers at Lambert Field on Friday endured another day of delays,
cancellations and wasting time on the tarmac. 

But at the end of the day, airline officials expressed optimism that
operations and schedules would return to normal today, given that
temperatures are expected to reach the mid-30s.

But Friday morning, flight crews arrived at the airport to find ice-caked
aircraft parked at the jetways that connect planes to the terminal. Removing
the ice from a single plane took hours. Meanwhile, arriving flights had no
available jetways.

Passengers sat inside jets on the tarmac for as long as three hours waiting
for a gate. Many of them called the airport to complain, Deputy Airport
Director Gerard Slay said.

"We did contact those airlines' operations to see what we could do," Slay
said. "We offered buses, but there were issues of getting people off the
planes."

To get people off the planes, the airlines needed jet stairs. None of the
airlines seemed to have them, Slay said.

Hundreds of passengers milled about in the main terminal waiting for news
about when they could fly. Ron Furbish, 47, of Mattapoisett, Mass., was a
curious sight, sitting quietly without benefit of reading material or music
device as he waited for his flight to Providence, R.I., after being delayed
in St. Louis for more than a day.

"Who am I going to get mad at?" he said. "It'll just raise my blood pressure
and that's it."

Five members of the Johnson family, from Upper Marlboro, Md., grouped
together near a bookstore waiting for Northwest Airlines to find the luggage
that went missing after the family's connection was canceled Thursday night,
leaving them stranded in Detroit. 

Finally in St. Louis on Friday, the family still faced a train ride to
Springfield, Ill., for a wedding today, Johnson said .

Hundreds of passengers scheduled to depart Thursday were rebooked again on
flights scheduled to depart this morning. Airport officials thus expect big
crowds and advised passengers to arrive early.

Not everyone was complaining Friday. Divya Ananda Das, 64, had a captive
audience as he handed out copies of the Bagavad Gita.

"I've been doing this for 30 years," he said. "People seem in a pretty good
mood, considering." 

Ellen Kimbro, 34, was among those who stopped to chat about religion. 

The storm forced her flight from Tennessee to land in Cape Girardeau, Mo.,
on Thursday. She took a cab to St. Louis on Friday but had to wait another
day to reach her destination, Chicago. 

Kimbro, from Jackson, Tenn., might have been the only person at Lambert who
didn't need to be there.

So, why was she? Because it was more interesting than her hotel room.


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