Quote:
Originally Posted by Quixote
The connection with the extension over World Way wouldn’t be the entire building but more of a “flask” perhaps double or triple the width of the people mover bridges. The other option is building the connection underground.
Regarding airline lounges, is gate proximity more valuable than offering lounges that are “decked out” (like a cruise ship) and spacious as hell? I’m talking private suites (for every party at any given time), variety of food and drink options, etc… lots of gimmicks. As I said before, LAX is so compact that these extensions that I’m proposing are where most other airports have their lounges in relation to their respective concourses.
And you would construct it as part of the same grand master plan, which includes rebuilding all the terminals. At the end of the day, people don’t choose which airline to fly with based on the terminal. What I’m proposing is decades away anyway, possible only once there are enough gates to shut down one of the current terminals.
The bottom line…
LAX needs and quite frankly deserves the best, as we have no true secondary airport. Neither Burbank nor Long Beach can provide relief. There’s Ontario, but we need CAHSR access and better Metrolink service before that can be a viable option for LA County residents.
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Long Beach could literally double its number of daily flights overnight, without building a single new gate. But the City of Long Beach put into place some of the strictest noise abatement policies in the US back in the 1980s, pre-ANCA, and refuses to change them. Same thing with John Wayne.
Burbank's noise policies were ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court back on the 80s, so instead the City of Burbank refused to rebuild its severely outdated 1930s era terminal. Because of this Burbank is without a doubt the single most dangerous commercial airport in California, probably in the whole country. The terminals are so close to the runways that a brake/tire failure on the right side of a landing aircraft would send it careening into the parked aircraft, likely killing hundreds. Aircraft have to be pushed from their gates directly onto active runways, meaning you have ground crew running around in front of landing jets. Not to mention the whole thing will fall over with the next major earthquake.
It took the airport promising to only replace gates one for one, and the FAA determining the Burbank's number of daily flights is limited by interference from Van Nuys on the departure path, before they finally managed to get approval to build a new terminal. And even then the City is dragging its feet, because they realize that if they make the airport safer it will be possible to have slightly more flights (seriously).
Speaking of, there's no reason Van Nuys couldn't have commercial service. It's a better candidate for it than Burbank. But the City of LA doesn't want the extra noise, so they forbid commercial traffic. So as you can see, it's not that there's truly no alternative to LAX, it's just that everyone wants someone else to deal with the noise.
But that rant aside, yeah I could see the airlines at least being somewhat interested in presenting an ultra-premium experience for their customers. LAX maybe wouldn't be the best candidate for it though. The key factor here his how much time the passengers are actually going to spend in the lounge. Passengers might only spend 15-20 minutes there if they're departing from the airport, virtually none if they're arriving. It's transfers where passengers might spend hours in the lounge, waiting for their next flight. As busy as it is though, LAX has relatively little transfer traffic. It's largely a factor in the basic design, there are some pretty firm limits on how many aircraft can take-off/land per hour, especially compared to Denver or Atlanta or Dallas.
I can't tell you for certain that's what they're thinking, but based on what I know about the industry that'd be my guess. LAX isn't like Inchon or Singapore or Hong Kong, it has a ton of native traffic and doesn't need to attract transfer flights with fancy amenities to make tons of money.