Rehab Set for LAX Terminal

The city will spend $225 million to upgrade the baggage system, fix ailing elevators and escalators and remove peeling paint in the 20-year-old Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, officials will announce today.

The update, which is separate from Mayor James K. Hahn’s $9-billion LAX modernization plan, is expected to begin next summer and take about 2 1/2 years. Officials said it would bring the terminal in line with other recently remodeled facilities at LAX by improving security, adding concessions and making the building easier to use and more pleasing to the eye.

“We’re committed to making sure LAX is a world-class airport,” Hahn said in an interview. “We’re still a year away from getting the Federal Aviation Administration’s record of decision on the master plan at LAX, and there’s no reason to wait any longer to move forward with improvements at the Bradley terminal.”

The city has been working on plans to remodel the interior of the international terminal since 1998. The project was slowed, along with other construction efforts at the airport, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The facility serves 32 airlines, up from 26 that called Bradley home when the terminal opened in time for the 1984 Olympics.

A tour of the terminal today shows that foot traffic from 9 million visitors a year has taken its toll. Security screeners stationed at a conveyor belt in the basement send bags through a decades-old X-ray machine mounted in the back of a beaten-up van. Stickers pasted next to airlines’ names on signs at the arrival level direct travelers to alternate ticket counters. And exposed ceiling beams and drywall are evident where officials recently evicted several retailers to build new security checkpoints. Just last week, travelers were forced to haul metal carts piled high with luggage and shopping bags up an escalator on the building’s south side after a leak in the water system flooded elevators.

“The international traveler has recognized that the international terminal building at LAX is indeed 20 years old” and doesn’t meet the same standards as many other important international airports, said Frank A. Clark, executive director of a nonprofit corporation that represents carriers operating at the Bradley terminal. “This project will help retain LAX’s role as a key U.S. international gateway.”

International terminals at airports that compete with LAX, including those at Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver, all have been updated in the last decade, Clark said. San Francisco opened a new $850-million international terminal in December 2000.

Officials plan to use a combination of federal funds, airline fees and concession receipts, passenger facility charges and a commercial credit line to finance the upgrade. Nearly a third of the project, or $72 million, will go to incorporate van-sized explosives-detection machines into a new baggage system. The federal Transportation Security Administration will reimburse LAX for 90% of the costs for the system.

Moving security equipment into the basement will free 40% of the floor space near ticket counters and give passengers more room to line up and move about, Clark said.

The terminal upgrading also will include replacing large, free-standing signs on the upper level with electronic flight information displays suspended from the ceiling. New flooring, lighting and wall treatments will be installed, along with new baggage carousels, a new public address system and upgrades to the building’s smoke alarm system.

The last upgrading at the Bradley terminal was in 1997, when officials spent $14 million to add 35,000 square feet of new shops and restaurants, passenger seating and restrooms.

Airlines that use the Bradley terminal say they are pleased that it will be updated, but concerned that the building still will not be ready for the arrival of the world’s largest passenger jet in 2006. Seven carriers plan to fly the 555-seat Airbus A380 to LAX.

The upgrade planned next year will work in part to get the Bradley terminal ready for the A380, Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards said, by making it “far easier” for the facility to handle the increased number of passengers coming off the large jet at the same time.

But airlines that have ordered the A380, including Air France, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, are particularly concerned that gates at the Bradley terminal are not designed to handle the large, two-story plane. They would have to load and unload passengers at remote gates near the sand dunes, from where they would be bused to and from waiting rooms in the Bradley terminal, which are designed to hold 35 passengers each.

This is an “unacceptable alternative,” executives representing Air France, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, wrote to Kim Day, interim executive director for the city’s airport agency.

The mayor’s office agrees. “The remote gates provide a second-tier level of service for our international passengers,” Edwards said.

He said the city has included plans to build gates onto the Bradley terminal that can accommodate the A380 in Hahn’s $9-billion modernization proposal for LAX. Construction on larger gates, however, is not slated to start until 2009, three years after the A380 is scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles.