LAX Braces for ‘LAX,’ the Series

With bird-induced blackouts, false hijack alarms and the divisive battle over Mayor James K. Hahn’s modernization plan, there’s plenty of drama to go around these days at Los Angeles International Airport.

It’s a place where an ex-con sneaked onto a flight under the noses of security officials and an uproar ensued over a bare-breasted woman holding a bleeding heart in a mural in the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

In NBC’s opinion, it’s also the perfect backdrop for a drama starring Heather Locklear and Blair Underwood. The network announced Monday that it will air the show, dubbed “LAX,” starting this fall.

NBC describes the series breathlessly: “Security breaches, tearful reunions, illegal immigrants, missing children, runaway animals, drug busts, drunken pilots -- there are countless stories to tell in ‘LAX.’ ”

The show depicts an “ongoing power struggle” between the airfield chief (Locklear) and the terminal manager (Underwood), and the “romantic misadventures” of an airline supervisor (Paul Leyden).

For those charged with running the world’s fifth-busiest airport, news of the show provided welcome relief from criminal probes into airport contracting, debates over Hahn’s plan and the deadly serious business of protecting the state’s No. 1 terrorist target.

“I’m amused,” said Raymond Jack, chief of airfield operations for the city’s airport agency. “Although I reserve the right to go from joyful to horrified later on.”

The show’s announcement gave airport executives an excuse to kid fellow staff members about who would portray them in the series.

“There’s no question that the idea of [Locklear] playing Michael DiGirolamo has kept us in stitches,” said Kim Day, the airport agency’s interim executive director.

The job description for Locklear’s character most closely parallels the duties of DiGirolamo, a 58-year-old airport operations veteran with a dry sense of humor who is not given to wearing low-cut blouses and short skirts.

Airport spokesman Paul Haney “is the hard one,” DiGirolamo said. He suggested David Hyde Pierce from the hit NBC series “Frasier.”

Most LAX executives have their own stories about off-beat events that have broken up the daily routine of paperwork and administrative duties. For instance, there’s the time that some of Jack’s employees came across a 40-pound tuna on a service road near a runway.

NBC executives said they produced the show because they were intrigued with staging a TV series at an airport, a departure from more typical dramatic backdrops, such as police headquarters, emergency rooms and law offices.

Unlike those venues, everyone can relate to life in an airport, said Angela Bromstad, co-president of NBC Universal Television Studio, which is producing the show.

“Everyone has a story about what happened to them in an airport or on an airplane,” Bromstad said, explaining that the show was pitched as if LAX were a city the size of Fresno. “The stories that could be told in a small city could be told in the context of an airport.”

The “airport genre” has taken off on TV since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A&E; Network’s “Airline” chronicles the ordinary -- and occasionally extraordinary -- hassles encountered by Southwest Airlines employees at Chicago’s Midway Airport and LAX. The reality show has been picked up for a second season.

NBC’s “LAX,” which is scheduled to air Mondays at 10 p.m., will feature both hard-edged stories and lighthearted moments, Bromstad said. Early story lines will depict airport officials desperately trying to find a questionable lost suitcase, grappling with the removal of inebriated pilots from a jet, and coping with an Alzheimer’s patient left at the airport by children who can’t afford institutional care, Bromstad said.

The show is the latest among hundreds of movies, music videos, commercials and other fare shot at LAX since it opened in 1929. Airport staff members brim with anecdotes about working at the only major airport in the United States with its own “film desk.”

Earlier this year, Tom Cruise bolted through the Bradley terminal during filming for “Collateral,” causing one surprised Asian passenger to swoon. “She was visibly thrilled to see him,” said Joan Sewald, film coordinator for the city’s airport agency.

NBC officials have yet to determine how much of the filming for “LAX” will occur at its namesake. But the production could be a boon for the facility, which halted filming for 4 1/2 months after the terrorist attacks.

One thing is sure: The show will make the nation’s best-known airport designation even more famous.

“We’re the only airport in the world with a hit song,” Haney said, referring to 1971’s “L.A. International Airport,” which reached No. 9 on the country charts. “Soon we hope to be the only airport in the world with a hit TV show.”