Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) New Gateway to the EAST

Los Angeles International Airport has sunk approximately $500 million in a new facelift for the world's fifth busiest airport. This once started out as a small landing strip on a Californian Ranch and has grown tremendously since it's dusty beggings as a municipal airport in 1927. The very first route from LAX was a flight to New York.

Since the upsurge in flights, the planes getting larger, passengers expecting more from an airline, LAX is investing to "hold it's top spot". A brand new runway and taxiway are being added which will boost business and also cater for the Airbus A380.

The Tom Bradley International Terminal was built in 1984 in order to facilitate the Olympics and this has spurred on the enormous growth of routes to Asia ever since. Today, more than 60 million passengers pass through LAX airport annually, most of these through Tom Bradley terminal. The flight routes across the Pacific are definitely the airport's fastest growing sector.

Michael DiGirolamo, deputy Chief Director of Los Angeles World Airports recently spoke to Richard Quest of CNN:

"We have the most flights of any U.S. city to Asia and we intend to keep it that way. We're the only airport in the U.S. who has 16 Chinese carriers operating out of here."

Currently there are 264 flights operating to Asia weekly with a passenger capacity of 10,000. In a recent survey it was revealed that this total is 45% than LAX's nearest rival, San Francisco. Trans-Pacific are a great boost to the coffers with load flights to Asian routes averaging 80%.

California has the largest Asian population in the U.S., the largest Vetnamese and Chinese population and the second largest Japanese population. The demographics are clear and it's all about destination. A quarter of United's capacity is to Asian regions and they currently fly 400 flights weekly to 13 Asian destinations.