Hollywood Burbank Airport is a public airport northwest of downtown Burbank, in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The airport serves Burbank, Hollywood, and the northern Greater Los Angeles area, which includes Glendale, Pasadena, the San Fernando Valley, and the Santa Clarita Valley. It is closer to many popular attractions, including Griffith Park, Universal Studios Hollywood, and Downtown Los Angeles, than Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), and it is the only airport in the area with a direct rail connection to Downtown Los Angeles, with service from two stations: Burbank Airport–North and Burbank Airport–South. Nonstop flights mostly serve cities in the western United States, though the airport also features regular flights to Atlanta, Honolulu, and Indianapolis as well as seasonal flights to New York (JFK).
Originally, the entire airport was within the Burbank city limits, but the north end of Runway 15/33 has been extended into the city of Los Angeles. The airport is owned by the Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport Authority and controlled by the governments of those cities. The Airport Authority contracts with TBI Airport Management, Inc., to operate the airport, which has its own police and fire departments, the Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport Authority Police. They also share police helicopters registered N102CG and N103CG both based out of Burbank airport on the north-east end of the airport on taxiway Bravo. Boarding uses air stairs instead of jet bridges. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2017–2021 categorized it as a medium-hub primary commercial service facility.
History The airport has been named United Airport (1930–1934), Union Air Terminal (1934–1940), Lockheed Air Terminal (1940–1967), Hollywood–Burbank Airport (1967–1978), Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport (1978–2003), and Bob Hope Airport after comedian Bob Hope (since 2003 as the legal name). In 2017, it was rebranded as Hollywood Burbank Airport due to the lack of recognition of Bob Hope Airport's geographic region.
United Aircraft and Transport Corporation (UA&T) was a holding company created in 1928 that included Boeing Aircraft and United Air Lines, itself a holding company for a collection of small airlines that continued to operate under their own names. One of these airlines was Pacific Air Transport (PAT), which Boeing had acquired because of PAT's west coast mail contract in January 1928.D. D. Hatfield, Los Angeles Aeronautics, 1920–1929 (Inglewood, CA:Northrop University Press, 1973, 1976), 111; William Garvey and David Fisher, The Age of Flight: A History of America's Pioneering Airline (Greensboro, NC: Pace Communications, 2002), 206–07. UA&T sought a site for a new airport for PAT and found one in Burbank. UA&T had the benefit of surveys that the Aeronautics Department of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce had conducted starting in 1926 to identify potential airport sites.Dr. Ford A. Carpenter, A Preliminary Report on the Airports or Landing Fields of Los Angeles County, prepared for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, October 1, 1926, typescript in the LAX Archive. This report includes photographs and descriptions of existing airports, including meteorological data and a location map. Regional Planning Commission, County of Los Angeles, Master Plan (Los Angeles, CA: Hall of Records, 1929.) Some authors claim, without documentation, that a federal Department of Commerce survey identified the site. The fact that Dr. Carpenter had been the Los Angeles meteorologist for the U. S. Weather Bureau and the Chamber's "Department of Aeronautics" name may explain the confusion.
It took UA&T a year and the cooperation of the city to assemble the site.Burbank City Council, Minutes, January 29, 1929; March 26, 1929; April 16, 1929. The site was rife with vines and trees and the ground had to be filled and leveled, but it had good drainage, a firm landing surface, steady winds, and good access to ground transport."United Airport of Burbank," typescript information sheet in the Archives of the Burbank Historical Society; n.p., but 1–2. Construction was completed in just seven months. In an age when few aircraft had brakes and many had a tail skid instead of a wheel, runways were not usually paved; those at Burbank had a mixture of oil and sand. There were no taxi strips, but the designers left room for them. Two of the runways were over long; a third was ; all were wide. These were generous dimensions, and the site had room for expansion."United Airport of Burbank," 3; Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission, A Comprehensive Report on the Master Plan of Airports for the Los Angeles County Regional Planning District (1940), 122.
United Airport was dedicated amid much festivity (including an air show) on Memorial Day weekend (May 30 – June 1), 1930. The airport and its handsome Spanish Revival-style terminal was a showy competitor to nearby Grand Central Airport in Glendale, which was then Los Angeles' main airline terminal. The new Burbank facility was actually the largest commercial airport in the Los Angeles area until it was eclipsed in 1946 by the Los Angeles Airport in Westchester when that facility (formerly Mines Field, then Los Angeles Municipal Airport) commenced scheduled airline operations.
The Burbank facility remained United Airport until 1934, when it was renamed Union Air Terminal. The name change came the same year that federal anti-trust actions caused United Aircraft and Transport to dissolve, which took effect September 26, 1934. The Union Air Terminal moniker stuck until Lockheed bought the airport in 1940 and renamed it Lockheed Air Terminal.
In March 1939, airlines scheduled sixteen departures a day out of Burbank: eight United Airlines, five Western Airlines and three TWA (American Airlines' three departures were still at Glendale). Airline flights continued even while Lockheed's extensive factories supplied the war effort and developed military and civil aircraft into the mid-1960s. The April 1957 OAG lists nine weekday departures on Western, six on United, six on Pacific Air Lines, one on TWA and one on American Airlines (a nonstop to Chicago Midway Airport). Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) had 48 Douglas DC-4 departures a week to SFO and SAN. PSA did not fly out of LAX until 1958.
In 1958, Transocean Air Lines Lockheed Constellations flew to Honolulu three times a week; twice a week a Constellation flew Oakland - Burbank - Chicago Midway Airport - New York Idlewild Airport (now JFK Airport) - Hartford.http://www.timetableimages.com , Oct. 27, 1958 Transocean timetable In summer 1962 PSA flights to San Francisco and San Diego were all Lockheed L-188 Electras, a total of 32 departures a week from Burbank.http://www.timetableimages.com , June 25, 1962 PSA - Pacific Southwest Airlines timetable
Jets arrived at Burbank in the late 1960s: Pacific Air Lines flew Boeing 727-100s nonstop to Las Vegas and San Francisco and one-stop to Eureka/Arcata. Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) flew 727s to the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego. Hughes Airwest (previously Air West) flew Douglas DC-9-10s and McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30s nonstop to Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Denver with one-stop DC-9s to Houston Hobby Airport.
Hughes Airwest even operated one-stop DC-9s to Grand Canyon National Park Airport near the south rim of the Grand Canyon. In 1986 United Airlines Boeing 767-200s flew nonstop to Chicago O'Hare Airport. The 767 was the largest passenger airliner ever to serve Burbank. AirCal McDonnell Douglas MD-80s flew nonstop to the Bay Area and direct to Lake Tahoe.
In 1967, Lockheed renamed the facility Hollywood–Burbank Airport. In 1970, Continental Airlines began Boeing 727-200 flights to Portland and Seattle via San Jose and also flew the short hop to Ontario. Continental later offered flights to Chicago via Ontario. Continental went on to serve Denver with nonstop Boeing 727-200s from BUR. Alaska Airlines began serving Burbank in 1981 with Boeing 727-100s and 727-200s flying nonstop and direct to Seattle and Portland, which was Alaska Air's first service to southern California.http://www.departedflights.com, 1981 Alaska Airlines annual report Aloha Airlines pioneered nonstop jet service from BUR to Hawaii, flying Boeing 737-700s to Honolulu before ending all passenger operations.
A 1973 decision by the United States Supreme Court in City of Burbank v. Lockheed Air Terminal, Inc. overturned an airport curfew imposed by the city of Burbank on flights between 11:00 pm and 7:00 am under the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause on the grounds that airports were subject to federal oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration and under the terms of the Noise Control Act of 1972.City of Burbank v. Lockheed Air Terminal, Inc., 411 U.S. 624 (1973), Justia. Accessed January 24, 2018. "Appellees sought an injunction against enforcement of a Burbank city ordinance placing an 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew on jet flights from the Hollywood–Burbank Airport. The District Court found the ordinance unconstitutional on Supremacy Clause and Commerce Clause grounds, and the Court of Appeals affirmed on the basis of the Supremacy Clause, with respect to both preemption and conflict. Held: In light of the pervasive nature of the scheme of federal regulation of aircraft noise, as reaffirmed and reinforced by the Noise Control Act of 1972, the Federal Aviation Administration, now in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency, has full control over aircraft noise, preempting state and local control." The airport now has a strictly voluntary noise abatement procedure to reduce noise of aircraft arriving and departing from the airport. Commercial flights are scheduled between the hours of 7:00 am and 10:00 pm. Departing flights usually take off to the south on runway 15, and arriving flights usually land on Runway 8, winds permitting.
The facility remained Hollywood–Burbank Airport for more than a decade until 1978 when Lockheed sold it to the Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport Authority. The airport then got its fifth name: Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport (1978–2003). On November 6, 2003, the airport authority voted to change the name to Bob Hope Airport in honor of comedian Bob Hope, a longtime resident of nearby Toluca Lake, who had died earlier that year and who had kept his personal airplane at the airfield.Li, Caitlin. "'Bob Hope Airport' Could Land in Burbank", Los Angeles Times, November 4, 2003. Accessed January 24, 2018. "Burbank Airport commissioners voted unanimously Monday to rename the airfield 'Bob Hope Airport.' The latest name change for Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport—the fifth in its 73-year history—could happen as early as Dec. 17, pending approval by the three cities with joint powers over the airfield." The new name was unveiled on December 17, 2003, on the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903, the year that Bob Hope was born.
After much debate between the Airport Authority, the city of Burbank, the Transportation Security Administration, and Burbank residents, in November 2007 it was decided that construction of a new $8 million to $10 million baggage screening facility for Terminal B is legal, considering the anti-growth limitations placed on the airport. The facility will house a $2.5-million explosive detection system, used for the automatic detection of explosives within checked luggage.