AIR WARS: Winters used to be slow...

AIR WARS: Winters used to be slow at Burbank Airport, with passenger traffic falling 25% from summer. But with a heated battle between Southwest Airlines and the new Shuttle by United, traffic is only off 9% from summer. Thanks to low fares to the Bay Area and other destinations, families are hopping on board for short trips, said airport spokesman Victor Gill. A common sight: families just off the Universal Studios Hollywood tour.

RAIN OR SHINE: At Universal Studios, the recent storms have only slightly dampened attendance, said spokesman Michael Gray. More business than usual is coming from out-of-towners, he said, who book tours in advance “from Bangkok to Belgium, Switzerland to Sri Lanka.” One tour stop is a simulated parting of the Red Sea, “which may be prophetic,” Gray said, given the weather.

GROUNDED: Bad weather has meant slow business lately for Bertie Duffy’s Bird’s Nest Tours, which conducts aerial sightseeing trips in a 1941 open-cockpit biplane out of Whiteman Air Park in Pacoima. Now, she is hoping for clear skies ahead. After 12 years in business, Duffy (above) gets passengers from all over the world who pay $90 per half-hour flight. Their most frequent comment is that there are so many swimming pools in the San Fernando Valley--and no one is ever in them.

BRISK BUSINESS: “This is a very good time of year for corporate business travel,” said David Cornish, director of marketing at the Burbank Airport Hilton. The hotel is nearly full because it caters to aerospace, retail and entertainment executives here for meetings because of the usually good weather. Cornish says a resurging economy is helping.

PLANE TALK: Edwards Air Force Base gets about 30 visitors for its tours each Friday in the winter, down from 50 in the summer. The tour is the same year-round, including displays of aircraft tested at the flight center. The only difference now is the dry lake bed where space shuttles have landed “is a real lake now,” said base spokesman George Fox.