AirCal to Leave LAX’s Terminal 1, Remove Handy Choice of Flights

For the thousands of passengers who fly each day out of Los Angeles International Airport to the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento, there is a special fondness, some say, for Terminal 1.

It’s not the scenery of the place, the ambiance, the restaurants or even the souvenir shops. Rather, the special allure of Terminal 1 lies in its unusual convenience.

About 5,000 passengers daily board more than 100 flights offered by two airlines based there--Pacific Southwest Airlines and Air California.

Catching Another Flight

Savvy travelers have discovered that if they miss their plane, or their flight is canceled or overbooked, they can usually walk a few steps across the corridor to pick up a flight on the other airline.

But as of midnight tonight, this small convenience will cease.

AirCal is merging with American Airlines and will move out of Terminal 1 to a new home in Terminal 4. And passengers who want to switch flights at the last moment will face a long hike or a bus ride to another terminal instead of a short walk across the corridor.

An AirCal customer relations supervisor, Lee Uran, said it happened just “by coincidence” that AirCal and PSA were stationed together in Terminal 1 more than three years ago.

Good for All Concerned

While the configuration was not planned for passenger convenience, he said “it ended up working out well for everybody.”

Businessman David Rich, who was catching a 7 a.m. AirCal flight to Sacramento on Monday, said that he flies a lot throughout California and that Terminal 1 has been very convenient.

“I’ve been sitting on a PSA plane and had it canceled,” he said, whereupon passengers disembarked, walked across the corridor and boarded an AirCal plane.

PSA regional manager Bruce Nelson said: “We’ve enjoyed good relations with AirCal. . . . The centralized location from a passenger standpoint has been a very positive thing.”

Jack Belton, a businessman departing for Sacramento on an early PSA flight Monday morning, praised the arrangement at Terminal 1, saying that at other airports he’s had to run from one terminal to another to switch planes.

Fast Footwork

“There’s nothing worse,” Belton said, than finishing up your business early, getting to the airport to take an earlier flight and discovering that the next plane leaves from a terminal a mile away. “You got to be a track star!” he said.

At most airports, complained real estate businessman Robert Chais, it’s “suicide” to try to make a plane departing from a different terminal.

“The arrangement here provides for a lot of flexibility,” said a 27-year-old Los Angeles attorney departing Monday on a 7 a.m. AirCal flight to San Francisco. He said he sometimes doesn’t even bother to make a reservation--he just shows up at Terminal 1 with his ticket and grabs the first plane.

Uran said passengers have had so much flexibility that it was sometimes frustrating for airline personnel.

“A flight would be 15 minutes behind, and we’d lose the passengers. They’d run across the hall and jump on another (PSA) flight,” Uran said.

Three Terminals

Now that AirCal is merging with American, the three airlines offering the most frequent service to the San Francisco area and Sacramento will be based in three different terminals.

PSA will remain at Terminal 1. American will operate AirCal flights from Terminal 4. United Airlines, with 32 flights a day, will operate out of Terminal 7. And several other airlines will continue to offer a few flights a day to the San Francisco area from points scattered all over the airport.

Joe Bodak of American Airlines said company officials gave serious consideration to continuing service to San Francisco and Sacramento from Terminal 1. However, he said that in the final analysis, consolidating the operation in one place made more sense. He added that Terminal 4 has some distinct advantages, such as a convenient passenger check-in point and a good parking facility with a pedestrian bridge connecting the garage to the terminal.

At Terminal 1, the space to be vacated by AirCal will be filled immediately by America West, which has 31 flights a day to 44 cities, including Las Vegas and Phoenix.