Airline service in the United States is teetering on the brink of collapse, with near-empty planes and coronavirus outbreaks that have left some air traffic control towers empty.
Even with sharply reduced schedules, airlines are consolidating some of the remaining flights because passengers aren’t showing up.
Los Angeles Times photographers took a look at the changing landscape inside Southland airports. Here are some of the empty and surreal scenes.
LAX
With demand for air travel in a nosedive, U.S. airlines are taking hundreds of commercial planes out of service and parking them in remote desert airports, with the hope that the aircraft will be back in the air shortly.
The coronavirus outbreak has pushed so many planes out of service that the business of storing aircraft is taking off, with some remote airports parking more and more planes on seldom-used runways and taxiways.
“There is no doubt, we are extremely busy,” said Lisa Skeels, director of corporate initiatives for ComAv, an aircraft maintenance and storage firm at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville.
John Wayne Airport
Long Beach Airport
Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered Californians to stay at home. With businesses and popular destinations closed, The Times’ Luis Sinco documented the surreal scenes.
California’s landscape of everyday life is changing under the state’s stay-home order. These drone photos prove it.
On Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills the high-end shops are closed, the normally bustling sidewalks empty because of California coronavirus restrictions.
On Thursday evening, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide “stay at home” order. Los Angeles Times photographer Jay L. Clendenin and videographer Mark Potts document the first night of the order in Hollywood.
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