Long Beach Airport

JetBlue Airways, citing frustration with the lack of facility improvements at Long Beach Airport, said Wednesday that it may cease operations at the airport where it began its West Coast expansion and is now the busiest carrier. No specific plan to leave Long Beach has been proposed, but a JetBlue spokeswoman said the airline could consider, among other options, scaling back flights or shifting them to other airports in the region, including Los Angeles International Airport.

They stood on a small landing strip for private aircraft at Long Beach Airport. A mother and father, a wife, family and friends. They gathered for the arrival of the body of Army Sgt. David J. Hart, who was killed in combat in Iraq. There were no speeches, no eulogy. Those will come later. On Tuesday afternoon, there was only the quiet, methodical ceremony of a soldier's final homecoming.

Cab owner Mario Zamora is teetering on a precipice of high fuel prices. Pacing around his shiny yellow taxi at Long Beach Airport, the 38-year-old father of five anxiously eyed the trickle of luggage-lugging travelers exiting the terminal. He was still rattled by the 10-hour shift he put in a few days earlier, when he cleared just $30 after fuel and other expenses. It was his worst day in seven years as a cabby. "I was driving around, trying to get something," he said.

Plans for a massive indoor movie studio are underway in Long Beach, where the buyers of a former aerospace plant say they will build a $500-million soundstage facility that would rival the largest established Hollywood studios in scope.

Thousands of gallons of firefighting foam were accidentally released Thursday in a Long Beach airport hangar, covering a police helicopter and other vehicles with fizzy bubbles. A technician inadvertently set off the firefighting system, and minutes later the hangar was filled to the ceiling with foam, Long Beach Fire Battalion Chief Frank Hayes said.

Running late for a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Yechezkel Wells told an employee at the JetBlue counter at the Long Beach Airport that his brother's funeral was the next day. When airline officials still wouldn't let him on the plane, the 22-year-old student at Talmudic University in Miami Beach made a decision his lawyer later described as "unbelievably bad judgment": He walked to a pay phone and called in a bomb threat. U.S.

Ramiro Augusto came to John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday expecting the worst, but breathed easier after learning that his JetBlue flight to Vermont was scheduled to take off on time. "I figured I might get stuck here, but so far so good," the 23-year-old student said. Five days after a stew of operational glitches forced JetBlue Airways Corp.

Long Beach Airport's cramped 1940s-era terminal would be modernized and expanded by about 60% under a plan approved by the City Council. The overhaul, which would include adding three gates and two aircraft parking positions, would help the airport accommodate about 4.2 million passengers annually after its anticipated completion in 2011, officials said, up from the 3 million it handles now.

Southern California's last major airplane factory got a reprieve Tuesday as Boeing Co. announced it would keep open its Long Beach production line for the C-17 Air Force transport for at least six more months. With no new orders, the sprawling plant next to Long Beach Airport had been scheduled for closure by mid-2009 with the rollout of the last C-17. It would have dealt a major economic blow to the region.

Long Beach Airport was evacuated Thursday morning after security screeners found a "suspicious" device in a piece of luggage that turned out to be a prototype for a new toy, law enforcement officials said. After a two-hour evacuation, passengers were allowed back into the terminal about 11:30 a.m. Officials rescheduled departing flights that had been grounded, airport spokeswoman Sharon Diggs-Jackson said.