Well it’s laid out a bit like DFW, but the terminal is even more narrow (i.e. from the street curb to the plane gate) – again, the idea was that one would park in front of the gate and just walk through to the plane. The result is that they have a security checkpoint every few gates, so changing planes (e.g. on Southwest) would very likely mean going back thru security (it did in my case). I don’t remember how there could be much room for dining (not that I had any time to look); all I remember is finding a Starbucks kiosk (not even a full-blown Starbucks) which had $8 sandwiches.
MCI (like DFW) was really advanced for its time and our World Book encyclopedia had diagrams of it as an example of a modern airport (though these also included rail transit systems, both within and to/from the airport, that may have been planned at some point, but I don’t believe ever existed). I think TWA was supposed to be the big tenant there, and they had an overhaul base (which said AA when I was there), then chucked it all to move to STL. It was really depressing flying through there, as they had envisioned this state-of-the-art worldport and there were maybe 2 or 3 other planes, and that was during the Christmas rush.
In fact, at all the odd stops that I’ve had to make (e.g. where I didn’t change planes, and/or we were diverted for weather), every airport seemed to be seriously underutilized: PIT, GSO, JAX, CHS… BNA has seemed like that ever since AA pulled its hub (which I think was the reason for building that terminal in the first place). PBI just seemed like an utter boondoggle, but maybe it fills up in the winter or something.
