A lot of focus on the $14 billion makeover of Los Angeles International Airport has been on improvements that passengers will see, but new facilities are also emerging behind the scenes. One of the larger of these is a $352 million aircraft maintenance hangar for United Airlines Holdings Inc. that opened this month on the tarmac behind United’s Terminal 7.

The facility is nearly the size of three football fields, or enough room for two double-aisle aircraft. It replaces and consolidates two aircraft maintenance centers United previously operated at LAX that were located roughly a mile and a half apart. It includes a parts warehouse, an engine buildup shop and a ground service equipment maintenance shop.
 
More than 800 construction workers were employed in building the maintenance facility and at least 500 United employees will be permanently employed there, according to the airline’s announcement of the facility opening.

“This new aircraft maintenance center is yet another investment United is making in the Los Angeles community, and particularly one that will allow us to operate a reliable airline and offer flights to exciting places across the globe,” Tom Doxey, senior vice president of United’s technical operations, said in the announcement.
 
According to statistics from Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that runs LAX, for the first nine months of 2021, United reported a total of 4.93 million passengers, placing it third in market share with roughly 14.9% of total passengers at the airport.
Hunt Construction, whose parent company is Dallas-based AECOM, was the prime contractor for the United hangar project while Oklahoma City-based FSB Architects & Engineers was the lead architect for the facility.

The opening of this aircraft maintenance hangar follows the $573 million renovation of United Airlines’ Terminals 7 and 8, which was completed in 2018. That was followed in January 2019 with the opening of a renovated 12,000-square-foot United Polaris Lounge for business-class passengers.
 
The combined cost of all three recent United projects at LAX is at least $950 million over the last six years, making it one of the largest investments at the airport by a single airline.

United also announced it is launching several new routes from LAX, including service to Latin American destinations, New York and Florida. The airline expects to operate roughly 120 flights per day from LAX by December.