ST. LOUIS, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- No large hub airport in the United States has lost as many flights in the last two years as St. Louis, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Monday.
Since 2001, Lambert Field has lost nearly 46 percent of its weekly flights and 60 percent of its available flight seats, newly acquired industry data show.
American Airlines cut about 200 of those flights in November.
"It's extremely apparent that if not for Sept. 11, 2001, you wouldn't have seen the vast changes we made in St. Louis," American spokesman Tim Wagner said.
Some industry experts, though, believe other factors contributed to reduced services in the nation's airports, said Reconnecting America, a nonprofit group based in New Mexico.
The group says the losses at Lambert are the result of continued growth among low-cost carriers, a boom in the use of smaller regional jets, and a shift to smaller regional affiliates led to the drop-offs.
Another major factor was the demise of Trans World Airlines, which built Lambert into its mid-continent hub decades ago.
