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Long Beach Airport

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Long Beach Airport
Daugherty Field
IATA: LGB ICAO: KLGB FAA: LGB
Summary
Airport type Public
Owner City of Long Beach
Serves Long Beach - Los Angeles - Orange/Los Angeles Counties - Multiple "SoCal" Cities.
Location Long Beach, California
Elevation AMSL 60 ft / 18.3 m
Coordinates 33°4904N 118°0906W / 33.81778°N 118.15167°W / 33.81778; -118.15167
Website Long Beach Airport
Runways
Direction Length Surface
ft m
12/30 10,000 3,048 Asphalt
7L/25R 6,192 1,887 Asphalt
7R/25L 5,423 1,653 Asphalt
16L/34R 4,267 1,301 Asphalt
16R/34L 4,470 1,362 Asphalt

Long Beach Airport (IATA: LGB, ICAO: KLGB, FAA LID: LGB), also known as Daugherty Field, is located in Long Beach, California, and serves Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The airport has four smaller runways and one long runway for jets (10,000 ft), plus nine taxiways, and occupies 1,166 acres (472 ha). It was formerly known as Long Beach Municipal Airport.

Contents

Overview

Long Beach Airport has very little passenger service compared with the dominant Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) approximately 18 miles (29 km) to the northwest, and will always remain a relatively small airport because of restrictive ordinances adopted to minimize noise in the residential neighborhoods near LGB. The airport is under one of the strictest ordinances in the United States on both airport noise and the number of commercial flights. The current noise levels allow for 41 daily commercial flights and 25 commuter flights. Local community groups and activists are very vocal about any changes at the airport.

At the same time, the arrival of low-cost carrier JetBlue Airways at Long Beach Airport in 2001, and that airline's decision to establish a West Coast hub at LGB, has substantially increased the air traffic to the airport and has cemented LGB's standing as a viable alternative to LAX for flights from the Los Angeles area to major East Coast cities. While JetBlue used the local noise ordinance to turn Long Beach Airport into a miniature fortress hub, it quickly reached maximum capacity and has since been forced to rework flight schedules and direct future growth to other Los Angeles area airports.

Air cargo carriers, including ABX Air (DHL), FedEx and UPS, also maintain operations out of LGB. 57,000 tons of goods are transported each year.

The Boeing Company (formerly McDonnell Douglas) maintains production of the C-17 military transport jet; maintenance facilities for other Boeing and McDonnell Douglas/Douglas aircraft (including the historic DC-9 and DC-10 aircraft) are also found at Long Beach Airport. Gulfstream Aerospace also has a completion center at the airport.

Although commercial flights are severely restricted, there are still a large number of flights at the airport from charter flights, private aviation, flight schools, law enforcement flights, helicopters, advertising blimps, planes towing advertising banners, etc. Because of that, Long Beach airport is one of the busiest general aviation airports in the world, with 398,433 aircraft movements in 2007.[1]

Long Beach Airport has a single terminal. It is notable for its Streamline Moderne style of architecture and is a historical landmark. Because of the age and limited size of the current terminal, changes, including a possible addition, are currently under discussion (as of 2005).

Long Beach Transit Route 111 serves the airport. Wardlow Road runs from the airport to the Los Angeles County/Orange County border, where it becomes Ball Road and crosses the northern edge of the Disneyland Resort.

Long Beach Airport is the second closest airport to Disneyland, after John Wayne Airport.

Airlines and destinations

The gates at Long Beach Airport are divided into the North and South Concourse, each with four gates. Gates in the North Concourse are numbered 21, 22, 23A and 23B, while gates in the South Concourse are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, and 4A.

Airlines Destinations Concourse
Delta Connection operated by SkyWest Airlines Salt Lake City North
Frontier Airlines Denver [begins May 14][2] TBD
Frontier Airlines operated by Republic Airlines Denver [begins May 14][2] TBD
JetBlue Airways Austin, Boston, Chicago-O'Hare, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, New York-JFK, Oakland, Portland (OR), Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle/Tacoma, Washington-Dulles South
Horizon Air Portland (OR), Seattle/Tacoma North
US Airways Express operated by Mesa Airlines Phoenix North

History

The first trans-continental flight, a biplane flown by Perry Rodgers, landed in 1911 on Long Beach's sandy beach. From 1911 until the airport was created, planes continued to use the beach as a runway.

The famous barnstormer Earl S. Daugherty had leased the area that later became the airport for air shows, stunt flying, wing walking and passenger rides. Later, he started the world's first flight school in 1919 at the same location. In 1923, Daugherty convinced the City council to use the site to create the first municipal airport.

LGB was formerly served by both United Airlines and American Airlines; both pulled out because of a lack of profitability[citation needed].

Military use

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. On May 10, 1928, the U.S. Navy commissioned the field as a Naval Reserve Air Base (NRAB Long Beach). Two years later, the city built a hangar and administrative building for the United States Army Air Corps as well. It should be stated that the only significant developments to the little city airport began only after the city built hangars and administrative facilities for the Army and Navy in 1928-30.

As a Naval Reserve Air Base, the mission was to instruct, train and drill Naval Reserve aviation personnel. A ground school was offered three nights a week at the base and two nights a week at the University of California in Los Angeles until 1930, when ground school was continuously offered at the base. On April 9, 1939, training in night flight began, and shortly thereafter its facilities began to be used by fleet aircraft as well.

However, with increased air activity by commercial airlines and the private airplane industry, particularly with Douglas Aircraft showing an interest in the Long Beach Municipal Airport, the facility required more space. With Douglas Aircraft as a resident, the attitude of Long Beach's authorities became cold and openly hostile to naval aviation, with its city manager saying that "the sooner the Navy gets out of the Long Beach airport, the better we will like it."

Because of this hostile attitude, the Navy had begun a survey for a more suitable site unknown to city officials at the time. Nevertheless, Admiral Ernest J. King, then the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and Admirals William D. Leahy, Joseph K. Taussig, and Allen E. Smith pointedly requested that the city of Long Beach repair the runways and reminded the city that the Pacific Fleet, then laying offshore in both Long Beach and San Pedro harbors, had a payroll of more than $1 million a month. Eventually the city complied with the Navy's requests.

Still, the city continued to show a hostile attitude toward approving a lease on any additional land that the Naval Reserve now required.

The Navy there upon, fed up with the city of Long Beach, decided upon the purchase of some property owned by a Mrs. Susanna Bixby Bryant, a fact made known by the commander of the base, Commander Thomas A. Gray, to the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, Admiral John H. Towers. The circumstances behind the purchase were revealed to James V. Forrestal, Under Secretary of the Navy, and by him to the House Naval Affairs committee who approved the purchase. Although Comdr. Gray had offered Mrs. Bryant $350 an acre, in the best patriotic spirit she sold the property at $300 an acre.

With the site acquired, in 1941, construction funds soon followed and NAS Los Alamitos began to take shape. Upon the transfer of the Naval Reserve Training Facility to Los Alamitos, quite to the surprise of city officials of Long Beach, in 1942, instead of returning the Naval Reserve Air Base facilities at Long Beach to the city, the Navy simply turned over the facilities to the United States Army Air Forces, which had also established a training base adjacent to it.

Nevertheless, with war clouds on the horizon, the NARB Long Beach was not totally abandoned but simply downgraded to that of a Naval Auxiliary Air Station (NAAS).

The 1940s was an extraordinarily busy time for the Long Beach airport. Throughout World War II, the airfield was given over to the war effort. In August, 1941, the Civil Aeronautics Administration took over control of the airport, which had increased to 500 acres (2.0 km2). Once Los Alamitos became an operational base in 1941, NAAS Long Beach now turned to servicing carrier borne F4Fs, SBDs, FM-2s, F4Us, F6Fs, TBF/TBMs, and SB2Cs. In addition, it had utility aircraft and such patrol planes as the PBY, SNB, GB3, NH, GH, and SNJ.

As the Navy's activities began to be shifted to Los Alamitos, the Long Beach Army Airfield at Long Beach became the home of the Army's Air Transport Command's Ferrying Division, which included a squadron of 18 women pilots commanded by Barbara London, a long time Long Beach aviatrix.

Like the Naval Air Ferry Command at NAS Terminal Island, the Army's ferrying work was an immense undertaking, thanks to Douglas Aircraft's wartime production. Ground breaking for the initial Douglas Aircraft facility occurred in November 1940, with dedication in October 1941. Douglas had been drawn to Long Beach primarily because of the presence of the town's growing municipal airport and the presence of both the Army and Navy there. With wartime contracts, the company immediately went into intensive production. 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. Additionally, the plant turned out some 1,000 A-20 Havocs, not to mention 3,000 B-17 Flying Fortresses and 1,156 A-26 Invaders.

With the end of the war, the U.S. Navy abandoned any use of the Long Beach Municipal Airport facility completely, and with it, the designation of Long Beach as a Naval Auxiliary Air Station.

On March 18, 2009, President Barack Obama's Air Force One landed at Long Beach Airport for the President's townhall meetings in Orange County and Los Angeles. President Obama made an appearance on Jay Leno's Tonight Show in Burbank on March 19, 2009.

See also

Los Angeles portal
Aviation portal


References

  1. ^ Traffic Movements 2007 PRELIMINARY from Airports Council International
  2. ^ a b Frontier Airlines (2009-02-04). "Frontier Announces Summer Schedule with New Service". Press release. http://frontierair.tekgroupweb.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=5180. Retrieved 2009-02-04. 

External links

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