LAX’s Plane Watchers see the speed, hear the thunder from front-row seats.

Off to the east, it looks the way an airplane usually does when seen from the ground--a tiny speck soaring in the sky.

Then the low humming sound begins.

The plane grows. The noise follows.

Bigger. Louder.

Bigger. Louder.

The humming sound is now a roar, a deafening thunder.

Run for cover!

The sky becomes the underbelly of a speeding plane.

It somehow misses the spectators and screeches to a halt on a runway at Los Angeles International Airport. Wistful smiles fill the faces of The Plane Watchers.

Along Aviation Boulevard on the east end of LAX are some of the prime airplane watching spots in Los Angeles, aviation fanatics say. These are not grandstand seats for a faraway perspective on the action. This is the front row.

Pulled to the side of the road is Everado Pedroza Jr. of Corona, who used to repair planes in the Air Force and now builds them at Northrop during the day and watches them land at LAX on his lunch hour.

“I know the work that goes into these things to make them fly,” said Pedroza, who is an active member of the Civil Air Patrol. “I’ve always”--wait, a light blue Korean Air 747 is overhead--”been crazy about airplanes.”

Down the road from Pedroza is another airplane fanatic with a camera in his hand.

Thomas Martin, 19, is clicking off snapshots as the monstrous jets grow closer, and closer, and closer--before they envelop all his senses as they pass directly over his head. He enjoys it so much that he drives from Pasadena half a dozen times a month to experience the soaring jets up close.

“I think my father took me to the airport when I was young, and from that day on I didn’t want to do anything else,” said Martin, who someday wants to fly commercial jets.

Martin is obsessed with airplanes.

He reads about them and watches movies about them. In school he is studying--you guessed it--aviation. Even on vacation, planes are his focus.

Of a recent jaunt to Hawaii, Martin said that “the most exciting thing about the trip was the plane.”