Los Angeles International Airport
airport serving the Greater Los Angeles Area
Los Angeles International Airport (IATA: LAX, ICAO: KLAX, FAA LID: LAX) is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles and its surrounding metropolitan area, in the U.S. state of California. LAX is located in the Westchester neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles, 18 miles (29 km; 16 nmi) southwest of downtown Los Angeles, with the commercial and residential areas of Westchester to the north, the city of El Segundo to the south, and the city of Inglewood to the east. LAX is the closest airport to the Westside and the South Bay.
The airport is operated by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), a branch of the Los Angeles city government, that also operates the Van Nuys Airport for general aviation. The airport covers 3,500 acres (1,400 ha) of land and has four parallel runways.
In 2023, LAX handled 75,050,875 passengers, making it the world's eleventh-busiest airport, according to the Airports Council International rankings. In 2024, LAX served 76,587,980 passengers, a 2.04% increase from 2023. As the largest and busiest international airport on the West Coast of the United States, LAX is a major international gateway for the country, serving as a connection point for passengers traveling internationally (such as East and Southeast Asia, Australasia, Mexico, and Central America).
The airport holds the record for the world's busiest origin and destination airport, because relative to other airports, many more travelers begin or end their trips in Los Angeles than use it as a connection. In 2019, LAWA reported approximately 88% of travelers at LAX were origination and destination passengers, and 12% were connecting.
The public source identifies “Los Angeles International Airport” as airport serving the Greater Los Angeles Area. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Angeles, International and Airport.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Los Angeles International Airport”, the useful work is to connect “airport serving the Greater Los Angeles Area” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8731. VIAF identifies the subject as 127877495. The Library of Congress control number is n83046921. Authority coordinates are 33.943, -118.408. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023, 2024 and 2019.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Los Angeles International Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.