Delays Greet Return of Fliers

Increased security at local airports after the allied bombing of Afghanistan coincided Monday with the return of near-normal levels of travel--leading to the longest lines at airline ticketing counters since the air transportation crisis began a month ago.

Lines stretched for blocks at Los Angeles International Airport and other regional facilities, and delays rivaled those experienced in the days immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast. Newly intensified searches of carry-on luggage and pat-downs of passengers at security checkpoints caused some to miss their flights.

New security measures, including a rule limiting carry-on bags to one per passenger, contributed to lengthy waits. Ticket counter areas became so crowded at LAX that fire officials ordered travelers to line up on the pavement outside the facility’s terminals.

“This is nuts,” said Jill Hamm, who stood in a never-ending line in front of the United Airlines terminal at LAX with her husband and two children. The Hamms, who just spent five days visiting Disneyland, waited for more than an hour to check their bags on a flight home to Vancouver, Canada.

At Burbank Airport, parking attendants and police officers conducted cursory searches of cars and trucks--a measure workers said was put in place Friday at the request of the Federal Aviation Administration.

John Wayne Airport in Orange County experienced similar crowds Monday morning because of increased security. One measure of the heightened safety checks was a report from airport officials that they will spend $16.5 million for guards and security devices this year, four times the amount spent in 2000.

The heightened scrutiny was particularly noticeable at LAX, where passenger loads on many flights crept up to pre-attack levels. Travelers are returning in significant numbers, despite the fact that private cars are still not allowed to drive or park in the central terminal area.

City officials sent mixed messages Monday about whether the Airport Commission will reopen the horseshoe-shaped access road to private vehicles any time soon. The panel meets today.

Even as travelers and carriers struggled to adjust to new security procedures, Mayor James K. Hahn announced a significantly scaled-back plan for LAX’s long-term future that focuses on making the world’s third-busiest airport more secure.

At a morning briefing in a courtyard near the Tom Bradley International Terminal, Hahn--who at times had to shout over the din of jet engines in the background--outlined his plans for improving the 41-year-old facility.

“We’ve got to take action now,” said Hahn. “We want to be the first big city in America to create the nation’s most secure airport.”

To accommodate longer lines caused by new FAA security rules, the city agency that operates the airport should consider building a separate facility away from the airport where passengers would check their bags and pass through security, the mayor said.

To overcome the FAA ban on parking cars within 300 feet of the curb, the airport agency should study moving the parking area away from LAX, he added. The federally mandated 300-foot buffer zone is one of the factors that led to the ban on private cars.

Hahn’s plan does away with many of the current master plan’s most controversial elements, such as a road circling the airport, a new terminal near the ocean and an expanded cargo facility to the east of LAX. The proposal would limit passenger growth to 78 million, instead of allowing it to grow to 89 million as anticipated in the earlier plan.

Airport executives approved of Hahn’s new vision. They added that public comments already received on the previous expansion proposal--as well as new responses to be gathered in six additional hearings--will be crucial to reworking the current plan.

“It’s very conceptual, and there’s a lot of work to be done to create a really refined fifth alternative,” said Lydia Kennard, executive director of the city’s airport agency. “We have thousands of public comments to analyze and respond to. We’re hoping to get good ideas out of all these comments.”

Airline officials said they hadn’t yet seen Hahn’s proposal.

“Obviously, we are a little distracted right now,” said Alan Wayne, a United Airlines spokesman. “United continues to believe LAX is a unique resource that’s critical to the economic health of the area. We need to see the details and exactly what Hahn’s proposing.”

Neighbors who vehemently opposed the current master plan were cautiously optimistic about Hahn’s approach. Some worried about how certain parts of the conceptual plan would affect their communities.

“I look forward to partnering with the mayor on this, as opposed to being [former Mayor Richard] Riordan’s adversary,” said Mike Gordon, the mayor of El Segundo and a key organizer of expansion opponents. “But we want to watch not having parking in the central terminal area very closely. We don’t want our community to become the parking lot for LAX.”

As the mayor and others discuss how LAX will look in the future, the Airport Commission is scheduled to meet this morning to consider reopening the airport access road to public vehicles. Airport officials were hopeful that the FBI and FAA would have completed an investigation the agencies started last week and authorize reopening of the road.

This investigation, prompted by new information received by federal officials early last week about threats against LAX, led commission members to postpone reopening the central terminal area to private vehicles.

The airport agency said it would cancel the commission meeting if it appeared that the federal agencies hadn’t completed their investigation. But even with the meeting still on, Hahn said Monday that he didn’t think it was appropriate to reopen the access road.

“Because of the universal threat that there will be a response to the bombing overseas,” he said, “I’m not sure opening the central terminal area this week makes sense.”

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Times staff writers Caitlin Liu and Dan Weikel contributed to this report.