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Business Traveller
Behind the Scenes at LAX
Aired January 13, 2007 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RICHARD QUEST, HOST: Hello, and welcome to CNN BUSINESS TRAVELER. I'm Richard Quest, this month reporting from, well, read the letters: L-A- X, Los Angeles International Airport.
Over the past few months we have spent a lot of time reporting on Asian airports, where there is fast growth. This month we have decided to cross the Pacific and report from America's principal Asia gateway.
And what has been the effect of all of this increased travel and traffic?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST (voice-over): Coming up on this month's show, behind the scenes at LAX. How Asia is making it into a super-hub. Getting time on your side with the International Dateline. How to get the cheapest return airfare. And sun, sea, surf and cycle, we escape in Southern California. That is all in moment.
But first, cue the music.
(MUSIC PLAYING "L.A. INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT")
QUEST: Sixty-one-and-a-half million passengers a year, a thousand weekly departures to 60 international destinations. Twenty-two percent of all weekly flights to Asia. And a hit song.
However you look at it, Los Angeles International Airport is something a bit special. This month let CNN BUSINESS TRAVELER take you on the insider's tour of LAX.
While the poor and huddled masses were sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to New York, pioneer aviators on the other side of the United States began using a dusty corner of Bennett Rancho in Southern California as a landing strip. By 1927, oil prospectors and local residents were able to push for the creation of a municipal airport. And the following year, the lease for Mines Field Airport was signed.
The first commercial airline service started in 1946. The first jets appeared at LAX in 1959, on the transcontinental route to New York. These days, LAX is the world's fifth-busiest airport. More than 60 million people a year travel through it. And more than 2 million tons of freight are processed here.
And if you have often wondered where the X in LAX comes from, well, before the 1930s, airports were just known by a two letter abbreviation, they were weather stations. As aviation grew rapidly, a third letter was added. And that letter happened to be X.
(on camera): In today's LAX, most of the 18 million international passengers arrive or depart from the Tom Bradley International Terminal. What makes this airport unique is that there are two waves of banks of arriving and departing planes to Asia in every 24-hour period.
It is this that gives LAX its dominant position.
(voice-over): International traffic through LAX is dominated by the Tom Bradley International Terminal. It was built in for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. Today 18 million passengers a year pass through the doors. It was been the spur for growth of the Asian routes throughout its history.
The tailfins speak for themselves: Cathay Pacific, Korean, JAL, ANA, China Eastern. LAX is all about Asia. Routes across the Pacific are the airport's fastest-growing sector, 264 flights a week with capacity for more than 10,000 passengers. That is more than 45 percent more than the airport's closest rival, San Francisco International, just off the coast.
Michael Digirolamo is the deputy executive director at LAX. Keeping growth in the Asia routes flying to the airport is his top priority.
(on camera): You have a fairly substantial part of the Asian-Pacific market here, don't you?
MICHAEL DIGIROLAMO, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, L.A. WORLD AIRPORTS: Yes. Airlines serve markets, not airports. That is why we believe L.A. will continue to be the dominant Asia carrier. This is the market where all the Asia carriers have to come.
When you look at how many flights a day we have to Asia, there is a reason for that, they are filling their airplanes. And that is what is important to them.
QUEST (voice-over): Trans-Pacific flights are a money spinner for the airlines. Load factors on the Asia routes average 80 percent. That is not surprising when you consider the demographics. California's GDP is the size of a small European country. And it has the largest Asian population in the United States. That includes the largest number of Chinese, the largest Vietnamese, and the second-largest Japanese population in America.
O&D, origin and destination, these are the key words people get out of the airport at Los Angeles, they are not just in transit. United Airlines is one carrier that has firmly backed Asian growth from California. A quarter of its capacity is deployed across the Pacific. It flies more than 400 flights a week to 13 Asia-Pacific destinations.
Where does that region fit strategically?
MARK SCHWAB, V.P. PACIFIC, UNITED AIRLINES: The reason that people are so interested in Asia-Pacific right now is that growth of air travel services, both on the passenger side as well as the cargo side, is among the highest in the world. Of the markets in Asia-Pacific, India and China are the two markets that are growing fastest right now.
QUEST: If you want further evidence of the importance of Asia routes, look at the battle between four U.S. airlines for the new route to China. Announced just last week, United Airlines will be allowed to fly from Washington to Beijing. It is a route that could net the airline up to $100 million a year.
SCHWAB: Beijing has service to 28 foreign capitals, Washington, D.C., isn't one of those. And our aim is to correct that. So we are absolutely delighted that the U.S. government has decided to allow United Airlines to begin daily service between Washington, D.C., and Beijing.
QUEST: Airports can never stand still. The planes are getting larger. The passengers are expecting more. And so if LAX is to hold onto its position against competition from San Francisco, Chicago, and other U.S. airports, it needs to evolve.
A new runway and taxiway are being built to boost safety, and cater (ph) for the Airbus A380 super jumbo. And the Tom Bradley Terminal is getting a half a billion-dollar facelift.
LAX is flying high for now, but the competition is always on its tail. And that is no bad thing for us baseless (ph) travelers.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: Coming up on BUSINESS TRAVELER, time travel. We explain the International Dateline.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
QUEST: Welcome back to BUSINESS TRAVELER at LAX. There are few things more exciting than being behind the scenes at a major international airport. This is the ramp at the Tom Bradley International Terminal. The planes behind me are being prepared for their oceanic flight. They will L.A. tonight. They will fly the Pacific and they will cross the Dateline. So, when they land, will it be yesterday or tomorrow?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST (voice-over): The International Dateline, a time travel concept that runs through the Pacific Ocean. Cross it going towards Asia, and you lose 24 hours. Head back to the U.S., and you gain a day. It is a concept hardened travelers find difficult understand. And they are not alone.
The 16th Century explorers like Magellan first noticed the problem of gaining and losing time. When they went around the world, they couldn't understand how their ships' logs were wrong when they got back home.
To understand the Dateline, you have to literally travel halfway around the world to Greenwich in Britain, the Prime Meridian. This is the home of time, zero degrees longitude. It is from here that all other measurements are taken.
DAVID ROONEY, NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM: Crossing the dateline can be a very strange experience. As the Earth rotates and as different times are held in different parts of the world, there is a point where the time is the same, but you have to change the day.
QUEST: And the like the Greenwich Meridian, there is no treaty setting out the rules for the Dateline, or even its existence. Everyone just simply accepts it has to be there to make timekeeping around the world work properly.
For countries around the Pacific, the Dateline's position has been moved time and time again because of politics and convenience.
ROONEY: If you look at the time line, or the Dateline, as the Dateline passes through the Pacific, it is not a straight because there are kinks to moving out of the way of the major landmasses in the north, for instance, keeping Alaska and Russian one day apart.
And then as you go through the island groups of the Pacific, you will see that it has changed over time, that individual groups can choose to move from one day to the next.
QUEST: Perhaps the most famous recent moving of the Dateline came in 1995 when the Island of Kiribati, which was on both sides of the line moved it so the time would be the same throughout.
It also enabled Kiribati to enjoy brief fame on January the 1st, 2000, when the island was the first place on Earth to see the new millennium.
(on camera): I can honestly say no matter how many times I have crossed the Dateline, I never seem to get it right. If you are coming to Los Angeles International, one of the most distinctive sights is that.
It is the Encounter Building. It is based slap-bang-wallop in the middle of the terminal area. Now what you might not know is that at the top of the Encounter there is a restaurant.
(voice-over): It was built as a symbol of the jet age in 1961, a futuristic "Theme Building" that promised an exciting vision of big hair and "Jetsons"-style transportation for the masses. Today the space lives on as the Encounter, a retro-futurist themed restaurant. It is a panoramic oasis of calm and sustenance from which to view the aerial ballet of a major airport in action.
Encounter is never too busy. And it remains one of LAX's most overlooked attractions.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: I do urge you, if you have got more than a couple of hours of a layover here, get out of the terminal and go and have an encounter of your own. Now let's have a close encounter of a celluloid kind.
It wouldn't be Los Angeles and Hollywood if movies weren't involved. And when it comes to planes and movies, the two seem to go together.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST (voice-over): Remember this?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "AIRPLANE!")
JULIE HAGERTY, ACTOR: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your stewardess speaking.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEVEN GAYDOS, EXEC. EDITOR, VARIETY: "Airplane!" is the greatest airplane film of all time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "AIRPLANE!")
HAGERTY: Is there anyone on-board who knows how to fly a plane?
(SCREAMING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GAYDOS: It hits all the jokes, all the references, all the cliches, it mines everything you could possibly mine out of an airplane for a movie.
TONY BILL, HOLLYWOOD PRODUCER/DIRECTOR: You have a fine line in "Airplane!", aviation movies, between the real and the phony, unless of course you opt for something really funny like the movies -- "Airplane!" movies which are just very funny, because they trade on that extreme different between utter reality and utter phoniness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "AIRPLANE!")
HAGERTY: This is Elaine Dickinson (ph), I'm the stewardess. Captain Oveur is passed out on the floor and we have lost the co-pilot, the navigator too. We are in terrible trouble, over?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GAYDOS: The "Airport" series were ripe for a satire, which is what lead to "Airplane!". "Airport was like an airplane book. It was sort of like you read it and you don't really feel proud of yourself. The inside of a plane is not a bad set for a movie if you keep in mind that what you are doing is creating drama. And when you have a whole bunch of people crammed into a small space, you have claustrophobia and you have intrigue automatically. So it is actually kind of a good space for a story.
BILL: "The Aviator," Marty Scorsese's movie, that is a very interesting movie, because Marty Scorsese hates to fly. So here is a movie about the love of flight made by a person who hates flying. That is interesting.
That movie doesn't have what an aviator would call realistic flying scenes in it. The scene where Howard Hughes crashes his airplane is fraught with, you know, airplane shaking and, you know, a lot of great filmmaking, but not reality. I think it is a dead genre. I think it is very hard to romanticize flight. And it is very hard to capture the reality of it for the pilot or for the passengers.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: Coming up after the break: Sun, sea, surf, oh, and cycling. We escape in Southern California.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
QUEST: Welcome back to CNN BUSINESS TRAVELER. We are in California. Let's get to grips with one of your questions. Chris Anderson (ph) has written to me. He lives in Japan and regularly flies between Tokyo and Melbourne. He has noticed that the fare is more expensive if he buys the ticket in Melbourne, Australia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST (voice-over): The first thing to remember is that full fare tickets are always the same price. It doesn't matter which direction you travel. But once the airlines start discounting, that is where the discrepancies come in. And often it doesn't make much sense.
Airlines discount because they want to steal a march (ph) on the opposition and build market share. Often this is when a foreign flag carrier is playing catch-up on the reverse leg of a popular route, as in this case.
For instance, out of Australia, Qantas is the major carrier, and so can charge higher fares; but on the return out of Japan, it is the minor player, and therefore offers cheaper prices.
CHRISTOPHE PEYMIRAT, EXPEDIA: The question (ph) for our airlines is to be able to get market share. So when you are on your own side, a trio originating from your own country, you expect a high yield (ph). And you are not ready to accept larger discounts.
When you are traveling from another country, a foreign country, where you may want to gain market share, you will be ready to accept low yield (ph).
QUEST: Then there is the simple question of economics. Historically airfares tend to track economic performance. So when one country's economy gets a bit sluggish, the airlines tend to be early discounters on tickets from that destination. After all, empty planes are always a disaster for them.
If you start hearing talk of economic slowdown, it might be worth waiting before booking that ticket. It could be about to get a lot cheaper.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: So now you know. After all of those dozens of hours in metal tubes crossing the oceans, you will be looking forward to a bit of fresh air. On the West Coast there is nowhere better than a trip along Highway 1, especially all the way up between Los Angeles and San Francisco through Big Sur.
Our escape this month starts in the beautiful city of Santa Barbara.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST (voice-over): And how different it is from Los Angeles. You forget about the three hours you have been driving as life becomes more laid back. Even the palm tree look more relaxed. The seas confirms with every sparkle that I should do away with this vehicle and get a closer look.
(on camera): And I'm going to ride along the beach, I think I have got to have the right equipment. Looks a bit boring -- ah! The chopper.
(voice-over): Much better. This is the way to see Santa Barbara.
(on camera): One of the things that is really important, I think, in 2007 is that as business travelers, we resolve to do something different.
(voice-over): On to Big Sur. Every year more than 3 million tourists drive Highway 1 and it is easy to understand why. At every turn there is a vista to behold.
I have come to Post Ranch Inn to meet Dr. Lee Klinger (ph). He gives a tour called Talking Trees.
(on camera): Why so much fuss made about the California Redwood?
DR. LEE KLINGER, ECOLOGIST & TREE SPECIALIST: It is the tallest tree in the world. It is one of the oldest trees in the world. They have become gigantic in size.
QUEST: Look at the size of these monsters. Good grief.
KLINGER: Other cultures built temples and pyramids to gain access to what the Indians considered the spirit plane or the vertical plane of existence. So these trees were hollowed out because they were temples or churches, so to speak, for ritual and ceremony.
If you look up here a ways, you will see a branch. And actually very oddly shaped branch. OK. That branch appears to be a branch that was grafted onto this tree when it was very young. And that branch is actually pointing somewhere. So this is a signal tree.
(voice-over): Day two, and our batteries are fully charged, it is back in the driving seat onwards and upwards to San Francisco. Don't forget that quick stop-off for Carmel. Clint Eastwood was once the mayor here, you know.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: By jingo, it doesn't get much better than that. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco at the end of Highway 1. It will take you about eight hours from Los Angeles if you do the drive non-stop. But I do recommend that you stop along the way and see some of the things that we have enjoyed.
Incidentally, if you are flying out from San Francisco, this is the other major Asian gateway in the United States. Just remember one important thing: 4,000 miles in that direction you will cross the International Dateline and yes, you will lose a day.
But that is the end of BUSINESS TRAVELER for this month. I'm Richard Quest, along the American West Coast. Wherever you are travels may take you, I hope it is profitable. And we will see you next month.
END
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