SARS and War Fears Halt LAX Recovery

The one-two punch of the Iraq war and a mysterious respiratory illness has halted a fledgling recovery in passenger traffic at Los Angeles International Airport and sharply curbed sales at some airport shops and restaurants.

The number of people passing through the world’s fifth-busiest airport was already at a six-year low at the end of 2002 after the terrorist attacks frightened leisure travelers and a sluggish economy forced many businesses to curtail their travel budgets. Now, fears about severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a disease thought to have originated in Asia, appear to be depressing travel further.

A walk through the Tom Bradley International Terminal tells the story: Lines at ticket counters are dramatically shorter than they were even a week ago, with the number of visitors boarding planes headed to Japan, China and Thailand down as much as 60%, according to an informal survey conducted this week by the city agency that operates the airport.

Even more disturbing to the airport agency and local businesses are recent declines in the number of travelers coming to Los Angeles from Asian countries. Passenger loads on planes arriving from Japan, Korea and Thailand are off 20% to 60%, the survey found.

“We’ve seen quite a noticeable softening of demand,” said James Boyd, a spokesman for Singapore Airlines.

The decline has prompted the airline to cut four flights a week at the airport since March 20, he added.

Although health authorities advised travelers this week to avoid only Hong Kong and the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where SARS is thought to have originated, the flu-like illness has depressed travel from most of Asia.

The phenomenon is likely to hit the airport harder than many other U.S. facilities because the facility is the nation’s No. 1 gateway to Asia.

The airport has an average of 25 daily flights from the Far East and 25 flights from other U.S. cities where Asian passengers connect to LAX.

International passenger traffic had just started to inch up at the airport in January and February, when it posted a 7.3% increase over the same period last year.

“The indication from many airlines is that the passenger traffic recovery started earlier this year has been interrupted by a combination of the war, the high security alert and the impact of the SARS virus,” said Paul Haney, an airport spokesman.

Domestic travel at the airport hasn’t suffered measurably so far, with some carriers even saying that they plan to add service this summer.

Unless it turns around, the drop in the number of international travelers at the airport would reduce parking and concession revenues for the city agency that operates the facility, making it more difficult to cover the cost of additional security.

The airport is spending $2.7 million a month, mostly on police overtime, to respond to an increase in the level of the nation’s alert from yellow to orange as a result of the war in Iraq.

Shops and restaurants at the airport, particularly those in the Bradley terminal, are already seeing their sales decline.

“Business is in tough shape out at LAX,” said Joe Lyons, vice president of business development for Duty Free Shops, which operates several outlets in the Bradley terminal. “If you take the first 19 days of March, we were up 15% over last year. Then the period from March 20 to April 3 we were down 17% below last year, so that’s a swing in business of about 32%.”

Duty Free Shops sell tobacco, whiskey and other high-end luxury goods favored by many Asian travelers, whom Lyons calls the “core of the concession.”

A decline in Asian travelers at the airport is also likely to harm the local economy. Asian visitors accounted for about 25% of the $4.5 billion spent by all international visitors here in 2002, said David Sheatsley, vice president of research and business development at the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The war is also depressing travel to European countries, with tickets to Russia, France, the British Isles and Switzerland off by as much as 14%, the airport agency survey showed. Local officials sought to reassure residents Friday that they are taking precautions at the airport and trying to educate travelers about SARS, which has killed at least 84 people and sickened more than 2,353 worldwide.

Starting two weeks ago, federal public health workers began monitoring all passengers getting off flights from Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

“The most important things we can do are early identification of possible SARS cases and isolation of people who meet the criteria for SARS,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, public health director for Los Angeles County. “It’s important to remember two things. First, we’ve had 115 cases in the U.S. that meet the case definition and no deaths, with 109 related to travel and very little secondary transmission.”

Fielding and Mayor James K. Hahn spoke at a news conference at LAX to discuss the local response to SARS.