Daily Breeze: LAX works to make room for jumbo-jumbo jets

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Monday, October 24, 2005

LAX works to make room for jumbo-jumbo jets

L.A. jockeys for the title of "gateway to the East," but the super-sized planes will come at a hefty price tag for the airport.
By Doug Irving
Daily Breeze

A new era of air travel will thunder into Southern California in the next few years, a mammoth jetliner with the power to rattle the regional economy.

Los Angeles will spend millions of dollars preparing for the arrival of the Airbus A380 super-jumbo jet. But airlines remain unconvinced that LAX will be ready to handle more than a few of the giant planes at the level of service they demand.

They need only look a few hundred miles to the north to find an airport ready and eager to lure the new planes -- and with them, the lucrative routes across the Pacific Ocean. San Francisco has opened a gleaming international terminal built with the A380 in mind, complete with luxury lounges and hallways lined with fine art.

The stakes in this competition are as oversized as the planes themselves. Every A380 that lands will spill hundreds of tourists and business travelers into the local economy. The planes could secure Los Angeles' position as the gateway to the East, but they could also give San Francisco a growing claim to that title.

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http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/1911852.html