Oh lay off the "liberal politician" crap before you look at the whole story. Various politicians, liberal and conservative, have tried to take the stress off LAX for years by getting people to use other airports, particularly ONT and PMD. The simple facts are that LAX is a postage stamp compared to most major international airports and the only reason it isn't an operational nightmare is the near perfect year-round weather conditions and that there has been a fair amount of population decentralization. ONT is indeed smack in the middle of one of the fastest growing areas in the country and can support increased flying, particularly short haul and hub flights. In fact, it would be wise of United to take advantage of their traditional strength in the California Corridor and run hub flights from ONT. Beyond that, Villaraigosa has been the most transport friendly mayor in Los Angeles in decades. Not only has he cast off Jim Hahn's ludicrious airport plan and moved back to the original master plans, he has also moved to lift the moritorium on subway building and increase the public transit access in the region. BTW, the international terminal at LAX is named after a "liberal politician" because of his dedication to LAX. In a message dated 2/1/2006 7:48:13 PM Central Standard Time, damiross3@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: Leave it to a liberal politician to think up something stupid like this! Domestic flights are needed in order to get the passengers for the international flights. LA is a big city but a lot of the international passengers are only using LAX for connecting flights, not as a origin or destination. You decrease short haul flights to LAX and more people will drive to LAX, thus increasing road traffic. The key to LAX is to grow the airport, not reduce flights. Another option, one that wasn't mentioned, is to have a high speed rail system from the other airports such as PMD or ONT to LAX that does NOT stop in between. However, the cost for this would probably be more than the cost of expanding LAX.