Set for Takeoff : L.A. Airport Tower Will Be Dedicated Today With Technology of the Future and Biplane Wing Design of the Past
When it opened in 1930, Los Angeles International Airport was two strips of dirt where a lone flagman stood at the dusty runway’s end to guide pilots because the control tower could not communicate with the radioless airplanes.
Over the years, the airport mushroomed from two hangars to the nation’s fourth-busiest air facility. As air transportation has evolved from biplanes to computer-driven jets, LAX’s air traffic control system has undergone a few metamorphoses of its own.
And today, airport and government officials, including FAA Director David Hinson, are dedicating LAX’s new air traffic control tower, a monument to the latest in computers and fiber-optics inside, and an unusual architectural sight on the outside.
“It looks a bit half-finished,” said 27-year-old Mark Edwards, a barefoot Australian surfer waiting outside the Tom Bradley International Terminal before his flight to Tahiti. “It kind of looks Chinese with the sloping roof, to let the evil spirits slide off.”
“It looks like a robot,” said German tourist Joachim Bosten, 42. “It keeps staring at you.”
But Daniel Olivas, the FAA project manager for the tower, had a different handle on the architecture. “It’s the only control tower in the world with this design,” he boasted.
The 277-foot-high tower, with its arching roof and struts and avant-garde sculpture, was designed by two architects to blend in with the 1961 Jet Age Theme Restaurant that looks like a spacecraft ready for takeoff.
Design aside, what really counts is that the Federal Aviation Administration spent $26 million to build this new tower. The old tower, built in 1961, is only 165 feet tall, and has blind spots created when terminals were expanded and the international terminal, which is three stories high, was built in 1984 in time for the Summer Olympics.
The new tower is a little more than 100 feet taller than the old structure, giving controllers a full view of the taxiways and gates that were difficult to see, particularly the mid-airport taxiway that connects the two north runways with the two on the south.
Also, the new air traffic control room, with 850 square feet, is nearly three times larger than the old control room, which will be used as a backup. Up to 14 people can work at a time, instead of 12, to direct the airport’s 2,000 landings and takeoffs a day. By 2010, the FAA predicts that will grow to 2,600.
“They are adequately staffed in the old tower right now, but the additional space in the new tower will help us accommodate the steady increase in traffic we expect in the next 10 to 12 years,” said Tim Pile, the FAA’s manager of external affairs.
The new tower, scheduled to go online March 30, will have a digital data link that lets controllers send pilots their departure clearance over a computer instead of a radio. The clearance then is read on a computer screen inside the pilot’s cabin, eliminating the error and confusion that occurs when several aircraft use the same radio frequency.
Other technological improvements include a structure that is seismologically sounder and can withstand winds in excess of 80 mph. The new communication system uses fiber-optic cable instead of copper wires, making it a faster and more efficient operation that can be expanded.
The architects for the tower were Kate Diamond, a partner in Siegel Diamond Architects in West Los Angeles, and Adriana Levinescu of Holmes & Narver in Orange. Their design incorporated curves to copy the arches of the nearby Theme Building and to evoke wings of flight. The wings are supported by columns and tie-downs that are supposed to make the viewer think of biplanes.
“It makes a statement,” explained Jack Driscoll, executive director of the Department of Airport. “People who fly in say, ‘We know when we’re in Los Angeles when we see that tower.’ ”
