On Sep 12, 9:13 am, Gene Seibel wrote:
St Louis bought out 3000 homes and built a billion dollar runway. TWA
folded, American moved out, and it sits unused right here in the
middle of the country. Seems it could take some pressure off the
busier hubs. Went to Operation Rain Check and the controllers begged
us to use their services to justify their existance.

Problem is, they financed that boondoggle with revenue
bonds, meaning they had to increase gate rental rates
and other fees, so anybody who opens a new hub in
STL gets to pay for the new gold-plated runway.
Because they bought out so much densely populated
real estate and relocated roads, that one patch of
concrete, by itself, cost a fourth as much as the entire
new monster Denver airport, with all its runways,
terminals, highways, and overpriced baggage
mangling system. And the new STL runway is not a
particularly efficient layout, with extraordinarily
long taxi distances to the terminal.

TWA couldn't afford to pay the cost of the new
runway, and American decided they didn't want to.

STL is like a car that's being offered by
the local politicians as: "For sale -- take over
payments". If the guy who's selling it
overpaid for a lemon car, nobody's
going to want to take over those
payments.