On Friday, December 1, 2023, nine members of USC ITE were fortunate enough to visit the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and get an in-depth tour of Delta’s newly renovated Terminal 3 in addition to the new Midfield Satellite Concourse (MSC) and its automated baggage-handling facility. Our tour was led by Mr. Jared Felder, General Manager and Deputy of Special Projects for Delta Air Lines’ base at LAX, assisted by Mr. David Kim, Chief of Airport Planning for Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), and Ms. Gianelle Lopez, Assistant PM for the MSC (Midfield Satellite Concourse) South project.
Our tour began in the arrivals hall of Delta’s Terminal 3, where Mr. Felder gave us an overview of Delta’s $2.3 billion project at LAX. This includes the recent opening of the new connector between Terminal 3 and the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT), connecting passengers behind security in these two terminals. In addition to this is the renovation of Terminal 3 at LAX, which necessitated completely gutting the original Terminal 3 and rebuilding much of it entirely from scratch. Mr. Felder noted that Delta was able to take advantage of the relief on their facilities due to lower travel demand during the pandemic to accelerate the project phasing, allowing for Terminal 3 to be reopened earlier than planned.
Our tour then included a walk outside Terminal 3. That’s right, our members got to walk around the ramp area, where we were feet away from aircraft parked at their gates and getting serviced to take passengers to their destinations. One aircraft in particular, shown below, was getting ready to push back for an on-time departure to Atlanta. We were then taken inside the airside of the new Terminal 3, where we were given a brief rundown of the many improvements that took place during the renovation of the terminal.
After our tour with Delta Air Lines and Mr. Jared Felder, we continued our LAX tour with Mr. David Kim, who showed us the inside look of the LAWA-managed facilities. As a fun fact, Ryan Zapata, our USC ITE Vice President, works under Mr. Kim as the Airport Planning Intern at LAWA, and was eager to help explain LAWA’s work in the airport facilities! Mr. Kim took us beneath the MSC terminal to show us the baggage-handling facility LAWA uses to circulate checked bags so that they make it onto their flight on time. This facility consists of several automated conveyor belts and “robotic arms” that direct baggage according to flight number to be loaded onto their respective flight. Lastly, our tour ended with a walk-through of the MSC terminal itself where Ms. Lopez pointed out several architectural features of the newly-opened building in addition to various operational procedures within the terminal.
Overall, the tour was a great success. Our group enjoyed learning about the intricacies and crossovers between Airport Operations, Architecture, and Engineering that all come with running an airport as busy as LAX. We would like to thank our hosts, Mr. Kim, Mr. Felder, and Ms. Lopez for being willing to take us around the airport and share their experiences with future transportation professionals.