Between May 12 and 17, 16 airlines will be shuffled among
gates at Los Angeles Airport (LAX) to set the stage for Delta's planned $1.9
billion renovation of terminals 2 and 3 and the construction of the Delta Sky
Way, which will connect those terminals to the Tom Bradley International
Terminal.
Mary Grady, LAX's managing director of media and public
relations, said the moves will be "a finely choreographed event" that
the airport has been planning for more than a year.
Still, she urged flyers to make sure they are prepared
before heading to LAX, both during and after the relocations.
"We've done a lot of planning. Now passengers need to
plan," Grady said. "We can only do so much. They need to check with
their airlines."
By far the largest player in the move will be Delta, which
is moving out of 16 gates in LAX terminals 5 and 6 and moving into 23 gates in
terminals 1 and 2.
Other airlines making gate changes include Air Canada,
Allegiant, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit and Virgin America, as
well as several more domestic and international carriers.
For Delta, the changes will offer some immediate convenience
for customers. The carrier will be operating only seven or eight flights per
day out of each gate instead of 10 per day, according to Delta spokeswoman Liz
Savadelis.
That should mean less congested gates and more operational
leeway for the airline. In addition, the moves will put Delta's LAX gates
closer to partners Aeromexico, Virgin Atlantic and WestJet.
Some other airlines will also benefit. Virgin America will
move from Terminal 3 to Terminal 6, the location of Alaska Airlines, which
recently acquired Virgin America.
Logistically, Grady said, the moving process will be
complicated. Computers and ticketing counters must be relocated. Planes must be
towed. Baggage handling, wheelchair services and sky cap services all must be
coordinated. And it all must be done between the end of each airline's
operations on moving night and its first flight the next morning.
One of the biggest challenges will be retooling the LAX
signs.
Approximately 1,000 signs must be changed, replaced, moved
or added as part of the gate-change process, Grady said. Those include
wayfinding signs in the terminals, signs on the roadways leading to the airport,
new signs alerting people to the moves and curbside terminal signs.
Grady said that ahead of the moves, LAX has already layered
overhead drive signs so that the old marker can be peeled off overnight to
reveal the new marker.
Most airlines will be making the gate move on one of the
nights between May 12 and May 17, but Delta will be moving over a series of
three nights, during which time the airline will be running operations out of
four LAX terminals.
Savadelis suggested that Delta flyers check their flight
status prior to going to the airport and that they arrive three to four hours
prior to their scheduled departure.
To help ease the process for all passengers, LAX will have
staffers in green vests in nonsecured portions of the airport to direct people
to their gates. The airline will deploy green shuttle buses for three weeks
during and after the moves to transport disoriented flyers between terminals 5
and 6 and terminals 2 and 3.
Once it has relocated to terminals 2 and 3, Delta will
commence work on a seven-year project to improve those terminals and build the
skyway to the Bradley International Terminal. The bulk of the work will be on
Terminal 3.
LAX has already completed its own $332 million, Terminal 2
upgrade that has affected everything from its ticket lobbies and baggage claim
areas to its retail and dining outlets.
The Delta Sky Way project will augment the city of Los
Angeles' $14 billion capital improvement program at LAX that has been
ongoing since 2008. The airport, which now has nine terminals, has thus far completed renovations at terminals 2, 5 and 6. Currently, work is underway at
terminals 1, 7 and 8.
In addition, the 18-gate, $1.9 billion Bradley International
Terminal opened in September 2013, and the $148 million Terminal 4 Connector,
tying Bradley to terminals 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, opened last September.
LAX recently broke ground on the $1.6 billion Midfield
Satellite Terminal, which will serve as a 12-gate extension to the Bradley
terminal and connect to it via a tunnel.
Expected to commence next year is LAX's $5.5 billion project
to improve roadways, parking and transit options at the airport, which last
year served nearly 81 million passengers.
Known as the Landside Access Modernization Program, it will
include a 2 1/4-mile, six-station people mover, a consolidated rental
car facility and an airport stop for the Los Angeles Metro system. It will also
include an intermodal transportation facility on the airport perimeter that
will offer parking, hotel shuttles, passenger drop-off locations and easy
access to the people mover, all outside the congested central terminal area.
The airport expects those additions to reduce traffic
through the terminal ring road by 40%, Grady said. First to be completed will
be the people mover and the rental car facility, with an estimated completion date of
2023.
Joel Kotkin, an urban studies professor at Chapman
University in Orange County, said the renovations are much needed at LAX and
could help Los Angeles defend its economic influence against challenges from
West Coast tech centers Seattle and, especially, San Francisco.
"Airports are basically the train stations of the 21st
century," Kotkin said.