Passenger traffic at Los Angeles International Airport has grown so fast over the last few years that a regional planning organization has substantially upped its projections, saying the facility could add more than 20 million annual passengers over the next decade.
The Southern California Association of Governments is set to release later this year a new forecast that projects the airport will handle 106 million annual passengers by 2027 – one year before the Summer Olympic Games.
The projection represents an increase of 21.5 million – slightly more than 25 percent – from the 84.5 million annual passengers at LAX last year.
The new estimate is poised to be a significant change from three years ago, when SCAG projected LAX would reach 96.6 million annual passengers by 2040. The projection of much more passenger traffic coming much sooner is predicated on the rapid growth the airport has experienced in the last few years.
LAX’s passenger count notched a two-year jump of 9.5 million – or 12.7 percent – from the start of 2016 to the end of last year.
A major reason for the change in expectations, according to SCAG’s Executive Director Hassan Ikhrata, is that the number of people flying in each plane has risen over the past 15 years. Planes nationwide are now averaging about 85 percent occupancy per flight, according to national statistics from the Federal Aviation Administration, up from 70 percent in 2001.
“The biggest change has been the increased load factor – planes are now more full than ever before,” Ikhrata said. “That and there are now more really big planes such as the (Airbus)-380” that can carry up to 540 passengers on a single flight.”
The number of flights also has grown, thanks to demand for international flights – especially from Asia – and relatively cheap air fares. The Federal Aviation Administration reports that the number of commercial passenger flights per year at LAX on planes with more than 60 seats grew from 570,000 in 2015 to 645,000, a 13 percent increase. The number of regional flights on planes with 60 or fewer seats has fallen 43 percent to about 35,000.
Measurements
Ikhrata said SCAG measures capacity at LAX by what it regards as the physical constraints of getting into and out of the airport. The capacity is higher than earlier projections of 96.5 million annual passengers in part because of the airport’s $5.5 billion plan to improve access over the next six years. That plan includes an automated people mover; connections to the Metro Green Line light rail route and bus lines; and a consolidated car rental facility.
But SCAG does not look at airfield constraints, such as the number of runways, the use of airplane taxiways, and the number of gates aircraft can use at any one time.
Taxiways at LAX do have some congestion now, but Ian Gregor, FAA spokesman for the Western/Pacific region, said there are no major problems in that regard. He added that work the airport has planned for taxiways should increase efficiency, allowing for more flights.
Gregor also said, the airlines could relieve some congestion on their own by spreading arrivals and departures more throughout the day instead of concentrating flights during peak travel times.
Full speed ahead
Airport officials say there is no hard cap on the number of passengers or flights into and out of LAX. Rather they are racing to accommodate the growth they say is coming. An estimated $14 billion will have been spent over the next six years to ease landside access, improve air field taxiways, renovate all existing terminals, and add two new terminals – one between Terminals 1 and 2 and an airfield international concourse now under construction that will function as an extension of the Tom Bradley International Terminal.
There also are preliminary plans for at least one more terminal, according to Samantha Bricker, deputy executive director for project development at Los Angeles World Airports, the L.A. city agency that runs LAX.
A “Terminal 9” behind the current Terminal 8, has been on the books since at least 2000, and a “Terminal Zero” on the site of a private offsite parking lot was mentioned in a 2013 plan document.
“As we look out into the future, more gates are definitely on tap,” Bricker said.
Settlement cap
A different attitude prevailed in 2006, when the city of Los Angeles, which owns the airport, reached an agreement with the nearby cities of El Segundo and Inglewood, as well as the Westchester district of Los Angeles to limit growth at LAX. The deal called for LAX to work to distribute air traffic more to the region’s three other airports – facilities in Burbank and Long Beach, as well as Ontario International Airport, which was owned by Los Angeles World Airports at the time, and has since returned to local control in the Inland Empire.
That settlement called for a limit of 153 gates at the airport through 2020, which at the time was believed to translate to a cap of 78.9 million passengers a year, a figure frequently cited through the years since the agreement was reached.
LAX has stayed within the 153-gate limit; it now has 141 active gates and will add 12 more when the new international flight concourse opens by early 2020.
But LAX blew past the putative 78.9 million passenger cap figure in late 2016 on its way to an annual total of 80.9 million passengers for that year and 84.5 million last year.
The pace of growth on passenger traffic has not prompted neighboring cities to rejoin the fight. El Segundo, for example, agreed not to sue Los Angeles World Airports over its $5.5 billion landside access plan.
“We believe the projects are positive and long overdue,” current El Segundo Mayor Suzanne Fuentes said in an email.
In return for not opposing the plan, Fuentes said, “LAWA…agreed to repair Imperial Highway and to conduct a study of the parking issues we are facing with the airport. We’re pleased since the agreement was signed, LAWA has been moving quickly to implement all the provisions of the agreement.”
But Fuentes said El Segundo does have some concerns, such as the lack of parking on airport grounds for airline food preparation contractors.
“As the airline food preparation companies grow to meet increased passenger growth demand, we’ve seen their capacity for parking is inadequate to meet the growth, and their employees are parking in El Segundo neighborhoods and running across Imperial highway to get to their jobs and cars.”
Another longtime opponent of expansion at LAX is also taking a more subdued stance.
“We think that the airport will hit that 106 million annual passenger cap by 2027 – maybe even sooner than that,” said Denny Schneider, president of the nonprofit Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion in Playa del Rey. “But the real issue is how poorly those passengers will be served because even all the new infrastructure they are planning is not equipped to serve that many people. Legally, however, you cannot limit the number of flights unless there’s no place for planes to land or taxi.”
SCAG’s Ikhrata said more flights will likely use Ontario International Airport once LAX hits the 106 million passenger mark. The Inland Empire facility served 4.5 million passengers last year, but with two underused terminals and the region’s longest runway, Ikhrata said the airport physically can handle at least 30 million passengers a year.
