ST. LOUIS — The arrivals board at St. Louis Lambert International Airport was showing mostly on-time flights Wednesday afternoon. Compared to larger airports, Lambert was quiet the day before Thanksgiving.
Naami Campbell flew in from North Carolina to visit her cousin in St. Louis. Fellow passenger Samir Kayali had a much longer flight to get to St. Louis, "coming from Madrid, Spain through Boston."
What a journey it was for Kayali, who told 5 On Your Side his plane was "only 23 hours delayed." A positive outlook after the plane broke down Tuesday, "but we finally made it."
After almost 20 years, the Kayali family is back in St. Louis to visit family.
While it hasn't been that long for hometown kid Marty Dolan, who was here for Thanksgiving three years ago, he said he's happy to be back in St. Louis.
Megan Sutton flew in with Dolan.
"This is the calmest airport we've been in, in a year," Sutton said. "We were walking through and there was just nobody around. I was like 'does anyone come to St. Louis for Thanksgiving?' Everywhere else we were just being herded like cattle. Austin and Chicago... it was bad, this was such a nice change of pace."
Bags came off quicker than passengers did and travelers were on their way.