LAX's Original Sin

The airport's design has frustrated billions of people. Who's to blame?

An aerial view of LAX, showing its distinct circular roadway.

If you’re an American, there’s a good chance you’ve been to Los Angeles International Airport, or LAX.

A few facts about LAX:

1. It is the country’s second busiest airport, behind Atlanta.

2. It is the world’s third busiest airport.

3. The first flight to leave LAX was on December 5, 1946.

4. Whenever I visit LAX I make a point of telling whomever I’m with that I have regularly fantasized about figuring out who designed LAX, kicking in the door of their office, and strangling them with a necktie.

5. The fact that LAX has not been blown up and completely reconstructed like a fledgling Vegas casino is an abject failure of the local government, and there is no excuse to not do this immediately.

I can’t help but seething when I approach it, and the thought of having to take the ride from my house to my departing terminal fills me with anxiety for weeks in advance, certainly enough to cancel out whatever joy I’d be deriving on the vacation I’m taking.

This is because even if there is zero traffic on the street, once you get to the entrance of LAX you will, without fail, run into a roadblock of bumper-to-bumper traffic with thousands of cars inching along, honking, jockeying for position, and you will notice that everyone is extremely pissed off.

Whatever duration your trip to the airport was, you will now be adding an extra fifteen to sixty minutes getting from the entrance to your flight.

This is because a group of geniuses, and I use this term snarkily, who designed LAX, the world’s third busiest airport and all, decided it should be a circle, with one way in and one way out, basically guaranteeing a traffic jam at all hours.

Now, I’m no genius. I am not a wealthy white collar professional from an obscure Eastern European country. I don’t wear spectacle style glasses with tiny lenses. I don’t drink espresso. I don’t eat snails or biscotti. My wife doesn’t claim to speak seven languages. I don’t have any rumored familial collections to the Nazi party. I haven’t survived a helicopter crash. I don’t have three trans children who don’t talk to me. I don’t have a weird old two-door Jaguar. I don’t spend my free time looking at blueprints of submarines. I have no ambition to climb Mount Everest. My teeth aren’t all yellow and snaggled. I don’t have creepy earlobes. I don’t collect rare coins. I don’t even know where my college diploma is, but it’s not framed and stuck on my wall.

Still, being sub-genius, I can still tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, that if you want to design an airport that people can easily get in and out of, maybe have more than ONE FUCKING ENTRANCE AND EXIT, Jesus Motherfucking Christ!

Instead of an oblong circle, maybe have a separate path that goes to each terminal?

Like in the shape of a star or a spider or a swastika. Something where traffic would be able to flow somewhere, instead of into more traffic.

Got it? Go smoke your stupid tobacco pipe and look at my notes, and can I have a billion dollars now?

Even though I’ve been extremely pissed off about this for over a decade, I never took the time to figure out who actually did design LAX.

It was a collaborative effort by several people, who have now caused millions of people to miss their flights, and have ruined countless lives.

The two most prominent were architects and designers William Pereira and Charles Luckman.

Prior to their work on LAX the pair already boasted an extensive resume, having designed the Hilton headquarters in Beverly Hills, CBS Television City, Luke Air Force Base, CBS Television Studios, IBM Headquarters, the Prudential Tower in Boston, and many, many other works.

The pair collaborated with another architect named Welton Becket, who had designed the UCLA Medical Center, LA’s Ace Hotel, the Beverly Hilton, as well as the American Embassy in Poland, and would go on to design the iconic Tower Records building, the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard, McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, and dozens of other buildings.

The last collaborator was a guy named Paul R Williams, who was notable for designing custom houses for the rich and famous, usually not places where thousands of people need to get to at all times.

All of those mentioned above were brilliant men. Honorable men. And yet, they committed a sin that has wrought suffering on roughly sixty million anually.

That’s the number of people who travel in and out of LAX yearly.

What can explain this profound lack of judgement? This catastrophic error, the consequences of which we’re just beginning to understand?

Nobody’s perfect after all. Even The Clash, typically stellar in their content, released an abomination of an album called Cut The Crap.

But, after doing toughly ten minutes of research, I believe I have the answer: In the original plans for LAX, instead of a roadway there was a train which would drop passengers off at their terminals. People would park their cars in a lot and then take the train.

This sounds smart. Very convenient. Fantastic work gentlemen.

For some reason this part of the plan was scrapped, and it’s my theory that they just moved ahead without accounting for the change. Maybe they were lazy and didn’t want to start over.

In short, I propose a class action lawsuit against the descendants of all of these architects, as well as the City of Los Angeles.

We can’t get our time back, but I believe we should be compensated for it.

Please send to a friend. I want to be able to keep this going. Thanks!