Los Angeles World Airports

When Clifton Moore ran the Los Angeles airport system from 1968 to 1993, there wasn't much emphasis on dining and shopping for people waiting for their planes at LAX. About all they could get were the basics: a newspaper, a cup of coffee, cafeteria fare and a preflight libation. The mantra was "We are an airport, not a shopping mall," and people on the staff were proud that Los Angeles International Airport had the least concession space of any major airport in the United States. Not anymore.

In what could be the largest commercial real estate transaction of the year in Los Angeles County, Los Angeles World Airports is negotiating to acquire a 21-acre parking lot on the east edge of LAX, brokers said Tuesday. It is being offered for sale by AMB Properties Corp., a San Francisco industrial landlord that has owned the lot called Park One since 2002.

A routine vehicle search by Los Angeles Airport Police ended with the nonroutine discovery of 16 guns and roughly 1,000 bullets stowed in the bed of a pickup truck late Friday morning. The driver, Phillip Joseph Dominguez, 47, of Orange, was booked on suspicion of transportation of weapons and held in lieu of $50,000 bail, according to the LAPD.

Hit hard by a deepening recession and persistent declines in air travel, the number of passengers at Los Angeles International Airport dropped by almost 3 million in 2008, reversing the airport's slow recovery from 9/11 and the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak of 2003, new figures show. Year-end statistics from Los Angeles World Airports show that passenger levels at the nation's fourth-largest airport decreased from 62,438,583 in 2007 to 59,497,539 last year, a drop of 4.71%.

The resumption of passenger service at Palmdale Regional Airport might take years, even decades, if the airline industry cannot recover strongly from the current economic recession, a new report by the Los Angeles airport authority predicts. "Certain conditions need to return for Palmdale to be deemed viable," said Mike Molina, a spokesman for Los Angeles World Airports, which operates the small facility.

Van Nuys Airport has been plagued with budget deficits for years. Audits have uncovered mismanagement, poor tenant relations, lost business opportunities and facilities that were leased in violation of federal regulations. Now, a dispute between two prominent business leaders and political heavyweights is raising more questions about the management of one of the busiest general aviation airports in the nation. Real estate magnate Robert F. Maguire and billionaire David H. Murdock, the chief executive of Dole Food Co., are locked in a legal battle involving their aviation service companies, which are competitors at Van Nuys.

To offset a 13% drop in passenger volume last year brought on by a worsening recession, the city's Airport Commission voted Monday to increase terminal rents at LA/Ontario International Airport. The falloff in air travel led to a marked decline in revenue from landing fees, concessions and parking, and that forced Los Angeles World Airports -- which operates the Ontario facility, together with Los Angeles International and Van Nuys airports -- to urge commissioners to increase rents in the facility's terminals by 15% from $131 per square foot to $150 per square foot per year.

The Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners on Monday decided to pay $116,579 in legal bills incurred by former airport commissioner Ted Stein, a figure in the "pay-to-play" investigation that helped end the political career of former Mayor James K. Hahn. Stein, a private attorney who resigned from the airport commission in 2004, has been notified over the last two years that investigations of him were dropped by the U.S. attorney, the Los Angeles County district attorney and the City Ethics Commission.

Beset by the worst economic downturn in the history of the airline industry, Los Angeles International Airport continued to shed passengers in March, including a stunning 19% drop in foreign travel compared with the same month last year. It was the 12th straight month of declines for the world's sixth largest airport. Figures released Wednesday by Los Angeles World Airports show that the number of domestic and international passengers at LAX declined from 5.2 million in March 2008 to 4.6 million in March 2009, a drop of about 12.6% overall.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Wednesday appointed a leading hospitality industry entrepreneur, Sam Nazarian, to the city's Board of Airport Commissioners. Nazarian, 33, is founder and chief executive officer of SBE operating group, which runs splashy hotels, nightclubs and restaurants, including the Sahara hotel in Las Vegas and the four-star Bazaar by Jose Andres restaurant near Los Angeles' Beverly Center. If approved by the City Council, Nazarian would succeed Christine Essel, who resigned in May to run for the council in an upcoming District 2 special election.