Quote:
Originally Posted by jg6544
When LAX first opened in the '60s (I think) all of the terminals were satellites. They were connected to the ticketing/baggage areas by underground walkways. It was thought to be the wave of the future. Why, I don't know.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Those Who Squirm
I suppose a key benefit was that, without having an above-ground concourse in the way, it gave ground traffic control a little more flexibility when it came to how planes were taxied around the gate areas. It did work for a long time, and was almost as iconic for LAX as the sadly disused Theme Building. Almost any time a movie character traveled through LAX, the long walk or conveyor belt ride through the tunnel was almost obligatory, from The Graduate to Airplane.
Perhaps the original designers underestimated the volume of future traffic. It's too bad that, now that most of the original satellites are now connected to the ticketing area by ordinary concourses, most of the airport looks rather generic and ordinary. Thinking of the old satellite arrangement of the 1960s and 70s recalls a time when air travel was still very special for most people.
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This postcard I found on eBay earlier seems to illustrate
jg6544's description quite nicely.
eBay
According to
lawa.org, LAX went from just over 51 million passengers in 1994 to 66.7 million by 2013.
Wikipedia estimates 70.7 million passengers for 2014.