LA’s fastest airport is getting a Hollywood-inspired makeover with improvements to safety and efficiency – but first – painful travel delays.
Travelers flying out of Hollywood Burbank Airport typically clear Transportation Security Administration security checkpoints in as little as five minutes. Curb to terminal usually takes under an hour.
But starting Monday, travelers at the airport favored by Hollywood insiders are warned to show up at least two hours before their flight to allow for “potential traffic delays,” airport authorities said.
The reason? A Tinseltown makeover to the historic airport’s main terminal and roadway that’s meant to slow things down for more than two months.
Don’t send in the clowns just yet. Architects say the glamorous airport’s new terminal is going to be a modern tribute to Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Renderings of the new facility show a canopy over the main entryway that’s inspired by the look of a silver screen.
And the columns at the entrance are slanted, to echo the searchlights used at movie premieres during Hollywood’s heyday.
“The theme is definitely a throwback to old Hollywood,” Brent Kelley, managing principal at design firm Corgan, told the commercial real estate trade publication CoStar News.
Burbank’s historic terminal sits less than a football field away from where planes take off and land, making the trip from your car to the tarmac a breeze.
But it also presents safety and access issues.
In 2000, a Southwest Airlines jet slid off the runway and through a fence, coming to a rest at a nearby gas station.
Last year, dozens of flights were canceled or delayed in October due to staffing shortages at the air traffic control tower, following the federal government shutdown.
And more recently, a plane and a helicopter on March 2 came dangerously close to colliding near the airport, in a scare officials said reflected growing travel risks.
Construction is now ongoing on the 355,000-square-foot terminal in the northeast portion of the 555-acre airport.
The $1.3 billion project is planned for completion by the end of the year.
The hidden gem of an airport’s cinematic makeover comes as behemoth Los Angeles International Airport to the south gets its own, $30 billion expansion.
LAX was the fifth-busiest U.S. airport in 2024, serving more than 76 million passengers, according to Airports Council International-North America, which is about 11 times the number of passengers served by Burbank.
The new terminal at Burbank “will resolve long-standing safety and accessibility issues” with the current one, the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority said.
The new terminal is 50% bigger than the old one. It will be farther from the runway, about 880 feet away. It will have 14 gates, same as the old one, and will retain its open-air design where use canopy-covered ramps to board planes.
But first, the delays.
“Starting April 6th through June 6th, construction work will close down one lane of traffic on the southbound side of Hollywood Way near Thornton Avenue,” Burbank airport authorities said in a statement.
“Passengers can instead use the Empire Avenue entrance, or enter the airport westbound on Thornton Avenue,” the airport authorities said.
The construction of the road is from Monday through to Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., for at least the next two months.
“The sidewalk and bike lane on the west side of Hollywood Way will also be closed between Winona Avenue and Thornton Avenue,” the message added.
Airport officials told The Post the new terminal is set to open in October 2026.
