Perhaps you haven't noticed that the Japanese airlines are moving away from 747s toward smaller aircraft on their domestic routes. Some routes that used to be almost exclusively served by 747s now have half or more of their flights on 777-200s and 777-300s. I think this is partly due to expanded airport capacity in the last 10-15 years (I think Haneda has more runways and departure/arrival slots than before, and of course now there is KIX and Centrair and soon Kobe). Look at the Tokyo-Osaka (ITM) route. ANA and JAL each used to have only 4 flights a day. Now they are up to something like 10 flights each, and between the two airlines there are planes leaving every 30-60 minutes.

I certainly don't see a big need for A380s domestically in Japan.

As an alternative to LAX, I would suggest that A380's could be accomodated at ONT (Part of LAX airports) and would probably less complicated:

* The volume of traffic at ONT presently would give the airport time to make any enhancements (Gate/Ramp/Runway) and not disrupt any daily flow. This is the majorhurdle at LAX. I wouldn't be surprised if they could make something like this happen within 6 months if "they" wanted to.

* The airport terminal is not used to near full-capacity and there's plenty of room in many aspects.

* I recall when the Concord flights were operating. In the few instances of landings in the southland, ONT was the ONLY option in all of Southern California. What's to say it couldn't be done for A380's?

* Very likely the only not-so-positive factor would be people not wanting to drive to ONT from metro LA (those within 15 miles of LAX). Then again, much of North Orange County, Eastern LA County, and all of the Inland Empire have the most growth, and the probability that at present, 1/2 of the PAX taking flights into/out of LAX are from these areas...myself included.

* Doing this would relieve LAX of some of it's volume, not to mention releif of air traffic. Heck, it would probably prompt more international flights and networking out of ONT.

* What's to say somebody couldn't do something like make ONT mostly a connecting hub of sorts...after all, what percentage of passengers aren't even going to LA, but only in transit, you could transit anywhere doesn't HAVE to be LAX.

* What about transportation such as rail? There's plenty of space and try setting up something like that at LAX, I could only imagine the jam ups that would cause.

* I'm not a planner/city engineer, so what do I know?

The A380 is designed to be a "hub to hub" aircraft.

ONT is not a hub for any current or projected A380 operator.

It is not O&D traffic at LAX that will fill an A380 (though it will help). It is all the folks connecting there to/from other US cities on AA, and UA and AS and CO and DL and US and NW.

But that's not as good of a rant.

Why not Edwards AFB? They've got real long runways.

As far as I know, ONT is not a hub for any passenger airline. UPS does have a sizeable operation there, however, and it may be possible that we will see some A380's passing through.