Welcome to 2022! I suspect that many of us are happy to see 2021 behind us, and I wish each and every one of you a better year this time around. The holiday season was pretty wet in Southern California; we had rain both right before Christmas and then again right before New Year's. LAX measured over 8 inches of rain in December, which is almost four times what we normally get in the month. The opening photo was taken Christmas night; I thought the TBIT lights reflecting off the wet concrete were pretty.
Along with the rain, we had several days of running east traffic, which is always exciting. We also have seen the resumption of more A380 service: In addition to China Southern and Emirates, we now have British Airways A380s at LAX again, and Qantas will be resuming scheduled A380 operations here later in January.
Here are construction photos taken on the last day of 2021:
A few rainy weather shots, taken the day before New Years Eve:
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| Timing is everything: The same view as the preceding photo, five minutes later |
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| And this shot was taken just a half-hour after that |
We also have a new airline at LAX: ZipAir, (callsign Zippy - and no, I'm not making that up!) ZipAir is a low-cost carrier based in Tokyo, with only about a half-dozen routes. So far there are two US destinations: Honolulu and Los Angeles.
Question for you. You show a picture of T3 getting rebuilt to approximately its original size. Wasn't the long term plan to turn the North concourses into a long linear Terminal, without "fingers", which would then allow the relocation of runway 24L/6R to the South to provide for a taxiway between the two North runways? Or is that still the plan, which is why the end of T3 is shorter because it's a "temporary" structure, just like the North end of TBIT? It's okay if you don't know the answer, just thought I would ask.
ReplyDeleteAt one point, there was a plan to make Terminals one, two, and three all into one long terminal. The only visible vestige of that plan is the funny north end of the TBIT, which was originally going to go away as part of that plan. While I don't know the whole story, that plan died when there was a change of political administration in the Los Angeles mayor's office. One of the many perennial issues in LA elections is expansion at LAX. Contributing to the death of that plan was Delta's moving to the north side of the airport. The linear terminal plan would have meant a reduction in the number of gates, and what Delta wanted was more gate space.
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