Originally Posted by
All American Flyer
I was actually at the meeting when that presentation was given (for other purposes) but my understanding was that these plans are still very tentative. Some of the commissioners were puzzled as to how a simple terminal link turned into a $100M+ project. The commissioners want a more substantial financial commitment from AA due to the fact that the project primarily benefits them and would contain AA baggage facilities, offices, etc. Obviously, AA does not like throwing down money even if it's a good investment.
Nonetheless, I would say that it's likely they're approved but I wouldn't count on seeing this any time soon.
If I were the AA representative at LAX, I'd be fighting tooth and nail to not put in a single dime to fund this project as AA has already made significant sacrifices of moving the AE nest all the way beyond the Sepulveda tunnel for the TBIT West project. Not to mention that they have to eat up the cost to shuttle passengers back and forth from T4 to that new Eagle's nest on a very inefficient mode of transport.
The only way I would agree to put up some of the construction cost is if:
A. LAWA guarantees that the entire south end of TBIT to be reserved solely for use by OW carriers (AB, BA, CX, IB, JL, LA, MH and QF) so as to give a huge advantage of smoothly connecting between AA and OW carriers in co-located area of LAX.
B. Re-open the airside tunnel to T5 to connect with AS flights that's going to be moved over there.