Long Beach, Ca. Has One of World's Best Airports

Owned and operated by the City of Long Beach, the airport has always been an important part of the Long Beach community. Our last blog post detailed some of the city's best elementary schools. Well, it turns out that the Long Beach Airport is the proud partner of two Long Beach Unified Schools, Burcham Elementary and Burroughs Elementary. Every year, the intimate tours give thousands of children and adults the opportunity to explore a major aviation transportation, manufacturing, and business center. We thought its good time to take a look at the proud history of our local airport and see how it ties into the community. Read for some fascinating facts and some little known history!

LGB, as it's known to pilots worldwide, is the oldest Municipal Airport in Southern California. From 1910-1919, the city's seven miles of beach served as Long Beach's "airport." That's right, takeoffs and landings were made at low tides, and it was common to see fabric-covered biplanes flying off the sand amidst ocean spray and a flock of seagulls. The first transcontinental flight landed in 1911 on the sandy stretch of beach near Cherry Ave. It was a biplane and was piloted by Calbraith Perry Rodgers (seen in this photo above).

Nine years later, the City of Long Beach contacted Earl Daugherty about developing a 60 acre municipal flying field on land situated west of Long Beach Boulevard and south of Willow Street. It was here, when the field was dedicated in December of 1920 that Amelia Earhart swooned and decided to dedicate her life to the study and discipline of flying aircraft.

To attract the United States Navy, the city of Long Beach built a hangar and an administrative building and then offered to lease it to the Navy for $1 a year for the establishment of the Naval Reserve Air Base - the mission was to instruct and train Naval Reserve aviation personnel. There was continuing tension between the city and the Navy until they were forced out and relocated to Los Alamitos. Get this: Mrs. Susanna Bixby Bryant sold the real estate for the new location to the government at just $300 an acre!  

At last, oil was discovered on nearby Signal Hill in 1921 and the surrounding area experienced tremendous growth. Two years later, the Long Beach City Council purchased 150 acres near the intersection of Spring and Cherry to enable the airport to expand and gain greater access to the nation's air transport system. The new airport was dedicated on December 20, 1924; the old one closed, replaced by housing tracts. It was this airport which first attracted the attention of Donald Wills Douglas in 1940. The company's first C-47 was delivered 16 days after the attack of Pearl Harbor and another 4,238 were produced during the war.

By the way, did you know that the airport has briefly featured in the movie Airplane! It's true. The runway visible outside the cockpit during the landing near the end of the movie is runway 30. Well, there's a good enough reason to screen that classic comedy again. "Excuse me waitress, I speak jive."

The past two decades have seen JetBlue dominate the number of booked flights at the airport. They have 32 of the 41 "slots" for passenger airline service. It often seems like a perfect fit for both travelers and airport management. However, the airline has recently reduced the number of scheduled flights. Why? "JetBlue’s decision to allocate aircraft to airports where demand for flights is stronger." (Press Telegram, 3/23/15) The company is also expressing a strong interest in adding International flights to its mix. Currently, the top 4 destinations from Long Beach are: Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Seattle, and San Francisco (in that order). Would adding a customs inspection building take away part of the charm?

Then there's the 2012 renovation that cost more than 140 million dollars. The design preserves the historic Long Beach Airport terminal as an important part of the airport’s operations, with new structures appropriately scaled behind it.

“Set behind an Art Deco terminal dating from 1941—by W. Horace Austin and Kenneth Wing, Sr. —is a range of crisp and cheerful new buildings by HOK that has brought this much-loved regional airport up to date without it losing its Bogart-Bacall-era Hollywood charm,” wrote the BBC’s Jonathan Glancey in naming the Long Beach Airport one of the world’s 10 most beautiful. The project was delayed for years as the city fought legal battles over the scale of the expansion and concerns about the potential increase in aircraft noise. But it seems the wait was worth it. Customer experience has been enriched while the charm of the original design remains.

And it sure beats a trip to LAX!