Travel at LAX Hits 6-Year Low

The recovery in passenger traffic that began at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this year has stalled and the number of travelers using the facility is at a six-year low, according to statistics compiled by the city agency that operates LAX.

The situation isn’t likely to improve, city officials said, until airlines resume flights canceled after Sept. 11. But carriers said they won’t do so until more people start flying.

About 27 million people traveled through LAX between January and June, down from nearly 33 million in the same period last year. It’s the least traffic at the airport since the first half of 1996, when 28 million passengers used the facility, statistics show.

The decline has pushed airport concession and parking revenues lower, but higher landing fees and reduced spending in areas other than security have offset those decreases, airport officials say.

LAX isn’t alone. Most of the nation’s major airports have been unable to shake the aftereffects of the terrorist attacks. People continue to shy away from air travel because of inconvenient new security measures. Business travel, the airlines’ bread and butter, has also been stubbornly slow.

“No one is recovering very nicely, I’m afraid,” said Paul McKnight, who manages the air service practice at the John F. Brown Co., an aviation consulting firm. “In November, December and January, things were coming back , but around March everything started to stagnate.” No improvement has been seen since, he said.

LAX and San Francisco International Airport are suffering larger declines than other major airports--traffic is down 17% for the year at each facility--which means that both slipped in worldwide rankings. LAX is now the world’s fifth busiest airport--down from third--and SFO is 21st, a drop from 15th.

The declines are largely the results of schedule reductions by major carriers at each airport after the hijackings. LAX’s largest airline, United, cut its schedule last fall to 104 flights a day, 74 fewer than it had planned. Today, the carrier has about 121 daily flights from LAX, and it isn’t likely to add any soon.

“Los Angeles is a very important hub for us,” said Chris Brathwaite, an airline spokesman. “But you don’t typically add bunches of flights back when people aren’t flying.”

Schedule reductions by United and others led LAX to chart 338 fewer flights a day in June than in June 2001. With fewer flights, most departing planes are 78% full, leaving many passengers to conclude that the airlines’ fortunes are improving.

“A lot of travelers have the mistaken impression that they just got off a flight and it’s full so those guys must be OK,” said David Swierenga, chief economist for the Air Transport Assn., an airline industry trade group. “But what they don’t see is that there are a lot of planes that are sitting on the ground, not being used.”

The drop in passengers at LAX is harming businesses around the airport that rely on travelers. “With lower traffic counts we don’t have the same number of people eating at restaurants and staying in hotels around the airport,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the county Economic Development Corp.

The one bright spot in statistics released this week is a gain in freight traveling through LAX. Tonnage climbed 4% in May and 5% in June, a sign that some lucrative international trade is starting to return to LAX, Kyser said.

Other airports have fared somewhat better than LAX and SFO for the first part of the year. At Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest, traffic fell by just 7% for January through May compared with 2001. O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw declines of 10%, and traffic at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York was down 12%.

Travel at Ontario International Airport, operated by the city agency that runs LAX, fell 8.3% from January through June of this year, statistics show.

Meanwhile, airports that rely on discount carriers, which have weathered the effects of the terrorist attacks better than major airlines, are seeing passenger traffic recover more quickly than it has for their larger counterparts. Many travelers prefer these facilities for their shorter lines and at least a perception of greater security.

Passenger traffic at Burbank Airport for the first six months of 2002 was down 4.4% when compared with the first half of 2001. At John Wayne Airport in Orange County, traffic climbed 2.3% from January through June. Long Beach Airport, which gained 10 daily flights over the same period last year thanks to upstart JetBlue and American Airlines, posted an enormous 61% jump in travelers.

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World’s Busiest Airports

Here is the latest list, based on passenger traffic for the first three months of the year, with the airports’ 2001 rank in parentheses:

1. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport (1)

2. Tokyo Haneda Airport (5)

3. O’Hare International Airport (2)

4. London Heathrow Airport (4)

5. LAX (3)

6. Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (6)

7. Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (8)

8. Frankfurt Airport (7)

9. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (11)

10. Bangkok International Airport (21)

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Source: Airports Council International