You can see where this is going, and where it should go. It also has that dreaded bus terminal for regional flights. But today it still has a couple gates is uses in TBIT and most of Terminal 5 is used by cats and dogs, the unaligned airlines like Spirit, Hawaiian, JetBlue, etc. It succeeded by swapping gates in Terminal 6 for those in Terminal 5 to complement Terminal 4 after Delta moved over to T2/3. TBIT South and Terminal 4/5 – The American/oneworld FiefdomĮver since the merger with US Airways, American has tried to better consolidate its gates. That will be gone, and officially, those gates will be moved to the southern half of the new Midfield Satellite Concourse (MSC), but I’ll bet American never uses those gates once. The problem is that this will be built right on top of the Eagle’s Nest remote gates that currently serve as American’s remote regional terminal. Once it’s done, United can lock down the southeast corner of the airport. This will be built to handle big airplanes, and there will be a customs facility. Today, the airlines are scattered with United in Terminals 7 and 8, Air Canada in 6, and most other international Star partners in TBIT. Terminal 9 will be a 12-gate facility meant to house United and Star Alliance partners. (I’ll talk about why it’s a mess a bit later, but yes, it involves roadway access.) This is a mess, because it will be the first terminal built east of Sepulveda Blvd since the original terminals shut down 50+ years ago. The other big build is the long-awaited Terminal 9. Terminal 7/8/9 – The United/Star Alliance Fiefdom The northeast corner will become Southwest territory. It’s already out of room in Terminal 1, so this will be good news for the airline. Assuming Southwest becomes the primary tenant, this will allow Southwest to not only move its international operation back from far-away TBIT, but it will also give the airline room to grow. Gates 9 and 11A in Terminal 1 today will be removed as part of this build-out, so it’s really an addition of 9 new gates. The plan is to build an 11-gate concourse that will include a customs facility. People will still check in and claim bags in Terminal 1 but then walk over to have more gates in 0.

What’s the difference? Well, there won’t be an area outside security for that concourse. For years there has been talk about creating Terminal 0, but instead it looks like it will be Concourse 0. It’s the only undeveloped part of the central terminal area west of Sepulveda Blvd that has direct access to the airfield. What today is a parking lot used to be a manufacturing site, but it’s also a hot commodity. When this work is done, those problems will all be solved, and the airport will have been broken down into fiefdoms. Southwest has to bus passengers across the airport for international flights, United is far from its international partners, and American still has that awful remote Eagle’s Nest gate area for regional flights. And a people mover that will connect the central terminal area to parking, public transport, and rental cars is underway.īut even with all this, there are still problems. Nearly all of the existing terminals have already been redone or are in the process of being fixed. That will be connected to TBIT by an underground walkway. The north half of a Midfield Satellite Concourse (MSC) is underway, and a southern half will eventually be built. The TBIT concourse which was woefully undersized has been knocked down and rebuilt with more gates. LAX has since been trying to make up for lost time. Terminal 2 was rebuilt shortly after, and that was pretty much it for decades. At that time, Terminal 1 and the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT) were built and the upper deck roadway was added to push departures up top. The first big expansion occurred in time for the last Olympics in LA in 1984. The original terminal layout from the 1960s remains intact, but they keep adding on. Though the optimal solution for LAX’s terminal issues would be to simply mow the thing down and start over, the airport has instead opted for incremental improvement. If it’s done by the 2028 Olympics, I’ll consider this to have been a speedy project. But don’t expect this to happen any time soon.

When done, this will eliminate all remote gates and allow for a more sensible organization at the airport between alliances while quite possibly snarling road traffic. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) will (eventually) build a bunch more gates in Concourse 0 and Terminal 9.

It’s been discussed for ages, but now the plans are real.

Lax runway numbers