Hollywood Burbank Airport
Hollywood Burbank Airport is a public airport northwest of downtown Burbank, in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The airport serves Burbank, Hollywood, and the northern Greater Los Angeles area, which includes Glendale, Pasadena, the San Fernando Valley, and the Santa Clarita Valley. It is closer to many popular attractions, including Griffith Park, Universal Studios Hollywood, and Downtown Los Angeles, than Los Angeles International Airport, and it is the only airport in the area with a direct rail connection to Downtown Los Angeles, with service from two stations: Burbank Airport–North and Burbank Airport–South. Nonstop flights mostly serve cities in the western United States, though Delta Air Lines has regular routes to Atlanta.
Originally, the entire airport was within the Burbank city limits, but the north end of Runway 15/33 has been extended into the city of Los Angeles. The airport is owned by the Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport Authority and controlled by the governments of those cities. The Airport Authority contracts with TBI Airport Management, Inc., to operate the airport, which has its own police and fire departments, the Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport Authority Police. They also share police helicopters registered N102CG and N103CG both based out of Burbank airport on the north-east end of the airport on taxiway Bravo. Boarding uses air stairs instead of jet bridges. The Federal Aviation Administration National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2017–2021 categorized it as a medium-hub primary commercial service facility.
History
The airport has been named United Airport, Union Air Terminal, Lockheed Air Terminal, Hollywood–Burbank Airport, Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport, and Bob Hope Airport after comedian Bob Hope. In 2017, it was rebranded as Hollywood Burbank Airport due to the lack of recognition of Bob Hope Airport's geographic region.United Aircraft and Transport Corporation was a holding company created in 1928 that included Boeing Aircraft and United Air Lines, itself a holding company for a collection of small airlines that continued to operate under their own names. One of these airlines was Pacific Air Transport, which Boeing had acquired because of PAT's west coast mail contract in January 1928. UA&T sought a site for a new airport for PAT and found one in Burbank. UA&T had the benefit of surveys that the Aeronautics Department of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce had conducted starting in 1926 to identify potential airport sites.
It took UA&T a year and the cooperation of the city to assemble the site. The site was rife with vines and trees and the ground had to be filled and leveled, but it had good drainage, a firm landing surface, steady winds, and good access to ground transport. Construction was completed in just seven months. In an age when few aircraft had brakes and many had a tail skid instead of a wheel, runways were not usually paved; those at Burbank had a mixture of oil and sand. There were no taxi strips, but the designers left room for them. Two of the runways were over long; a third was ; all were wide. These were generous dimensions, and the site had room for expansion.
United Airport was dedicated amid much festivity on Memorial Day weekend, 1930. The airport and its handsome Spanish Revival-style terminal was a showy competitor to nearby Grand Central Airport in Glendale, which was then Los Angeles' main airline terminal. The new Burbank facility was actually the largest commercial airport in the Los Angeles area until it was eclipsed in 1946 by the Los Angeles Airport in Westchester when that facility commenced scheduled airline operations.
The Burbank facility remained United Airport until 1934, when it was renamed Union Air Terminal. The name change came the same year that federal anti-trust actions caused United Aircraft and Transport to dissolve, which took effect September 26, 1934. The Union Air Terminal moniker stuck until Lockheed bought the airport in 1940 and renamed it Lockheed Air Terminal.
In March 1939, airlines scheduled sixteen departures a day out of Burbank: eight United Airlines, five Western Airlines and three TWA. Airline flights continued even while Lockheed's extensive factories supplied the war effort and developed military and civil aircraft into the mid-1960s. The April 1957 OAG lists nine weekday departures on Western, six on United, six on Pacific Air Lines, one on TWA and one on American Airlines. Pacific Southwest Airlines had 48 Douglas DC-4 departures a week to SFO and SAN. PSA did not fly out of LAX until 1958.
In 1958, Transocean Air Lines Lockheed Constellations flew to Honolulu three times a week; twice a week a Constellation flew Oakland - Burbank - Chicago Midway Airport - New York Idlewild Airport - Hartford. In summer 1962 PSA flights to San Francisco and San Diego were all Lockheed L-188 Electras, a total of 32 departures a week from Burbank.
Jets arrived at Burbank in the late 1960s: Pacific Air Lines flew Boeing 727-100s nonstop to Las Vegas and San Francisco and one-stop to Eureka/Arcata. Pacific Southwest Airlines flew 727s to the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego. Hughes Airwest flew Douglas DC-9-10s and McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30s nonstop to Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Denver with one-stop DC-9s to Houston Hobby Airport.
Hughes Airwest even operated one-stop DC-9s to Grand Canyon National Park Airport near the south rim of the Grand Canyon. In 1986 United Airlines Boeing 767-200s flew nonstop to Chicago O'Hare Airport. The 767 was the largest passenger airliner ever to serve Burbank. AirCal McDonnell Douglas MD-80s flew nonstop to the Bay Area and direct to Lake Tahoe.
In 1967, Lockheed renamed the facility Hollywood–Burbank Airport. In 1970, Continental Airlines began Boeing 727-200 flights to Portland and Seattle via San Jose and also flew the short hop to Ontario. Continental later offered flights to Chicago via Ontario. Continental went on to serve Denver with nonstop Boeing 727-200s from BUR. Alaska Airlines began serving Burbank in 1981 with Boeing 727-100s and 727-200s flying nonstop and direct to Seattle and Portland, which was Alaska Air's first service to southern California. Aloha Airlines pioneered nonstop jet service from BUR to Hawaii, flying Boeing 737-700s to Honolulu before ending all passenger operations.
A 1973 decision by the United States Supreme Court in City of Burbank v. Lockheed Air Terminal, Inc. overturned an airport curfew imposed by the city of Burbank on flights between 11:00 pm and 7:00 am under the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause on the grounds that airports were subject to federal oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration and under the terms of the Noise Control Act of 1972. The airport now has a strictly voluntary noise abatement procedure to reduce noise of aircraft arriving and departing from the airport. Commercial flights are scheduled between the hours of 7:00 am and 10:00 pm. Departing flights usually take off to the south on runway 15, and arriving flights usually land on Runway 8, winds permitting.
The facility remained Hollywood–Burbank Airport for more than a decade until 1978 when Lockheed sold it to the Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport Authority. The airport then got its fifth name: Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport. On November 6, 2003, the airport authority voted to change the name to Bob Hope Airport in honor of comedian Bob Hope, a longtime resident of nearby Toluca Lake, who had died earlier that year and who had kept his personal airplane at the airfield. The new name was unveiled on December 17, 2003, on the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903, the year that Bob Hope was born.
After much debate between the Airport Authority, the city of Burbank, the Transportation Security Administration, and Burbank residents, in November 2007 it was decided that construction of a new $8 million to $10 million baggage screening facility for Terminal B is legal, considering the anti-growth limitations placed on the airport. The facility will house a $2.5-million explosive detection system, used for the automatic detection of explosives within checked luggage.
In June 2014, a $112 million Regional Transportation Center opened. The 520,000-square-foot center at Hollywood Way and Empire Avenue was also built to withstand a major earthquake while serving as an emergency "nerve center." The industrial-looking hub with a red steel roof will be adorned by 16, three-story art panels. Solar panels generating 1.5 megawatts of electricity will also be added to its roof. A nearby parking garage was built to handle more than 1,000 cars, while traffic lights have been reworked around the airport.
Flight path changes and related noise issues
Flight paths of aircraft departing Hollywood Burbank Airport changed as part of the Federal Aviation Administration's airspace modernization program called NextGen. An independent analysis confirmed in October 2018 that "a connection was found between the implementation and the increase in the number of flights over areas south of the 101 Freeway.". Patrick Lammerding, the airport's deputy executive director of planning and development, told The New York Times that in 2016, the airport received 577 complaints; a year after the flight path changes, in 2018, the number rose to 222,798; in the first half of 2019, complaints soared to 616,022.Both the airport itself and third-party sources track noise complaints for the Hollywood Burbank Airport. In addition to the airport's systems, as of December 14, 2022, third party site Airnoise.io has received 3,540,332 noise complaints for the Hollywood Burbank Airport. While the airport's Webtrak website requires users to fill out a web page with all the details of each aircraft disturbance, when pressed while an aircraft is overhead, the Airnoise button and website will automatically file a complaint on the user's behalf.
While in-person meetings regarding noise issues have been held in large meeting spaces with hundreds of attendees, airport staff claims that approximately 90% of complaints are filed by 45 individuals. Such a claim is consistent with the airport's continued inaction to address these issues, despite repeated pleas for relief and solutions from local communities and elected officials from every level of government. In 2019 and 2020, the airport and various stakeholders participated in a Southern San Fernando Valley Airport Noise Task Force administered by aviation industry consultants that held meetings and presented 16 recommendations to the FAA in June 2020, to address the issue.
The FAA responded by letter in September 2020, that most of the recommendations were either "not operationally feasible" or "not technically feasible" and, as of July 29, 2022, has not implemented any solutions. On August 1, 2022, Hollywood Burbank Airport received $3 million for Infrastructure upgrades and $805,900 will go toward an Airport Noise Compatibility Planning study, including updating Noise Exposure Maps and identifying where the airport can undertake mitigation efforts, according to Schiff's office.
As part of the noise study, the airport is also establishing a 12-member Citizen's Advisory Committee, which will include a majority of representatives from non-impacted areas: 3 members respectively from the airport owner cities of Burbank, Glendale, and Pasadena, and 1 member, respectively, from each of Los Angeles Council Districts 2, 4, and 6. After having taken almost four years to form the Citizens Advisory Committee, commissioners voted on March 18, 2024, to remove Los Angeles representatives from the citizen-run board.