I visited the private terminal at LAX where rich people pay upwards of $4,500 to skip the lines and pull up to their planes in BMWs, and it made me feel like a billionaire

Tanza Loudenback/Business Insider

• A new terminal called The Private Suite opened at Los Angeles International Airport in late 2017.
• The Private Suite offers a $4,500-a-year base membership and costs $2,700 to use per domestic flight and $3,000 per international flight for up to four passengers.
• Food and drinks, a private room and bathroom, an on-site spa, and a personal chauffeur who takes you directly to your plane are included.
• I recently toured The Private Suite and found it accommodating and comfortable. The best part? No crowds.

I didn't expect to leave The Private Suite feeling like a pampered billionaire.

When I pulled into the driveway on an unusually gloomy Los Angeles morning, a man with a wide, toothy grin and a bulletproof vest emblazoned with "SECURITY" greeted me cheerily. The dichotomy caught me off guard; they'd been expecting me, he said, and the tall gates parted, revealing a modern-looking, one-story building facing the airport runway.

The Private Suite is a terminal built specifically for wealthy travelers flying in and out of Los Angeles International Airport. (I'm not a wealthy traveler by any means, but the folks at The Private Suite made an exception for this story. I get the feeling they treat their paying customers with the same dutiful enthusiasm.)

The independently owned and operated terminal opened in October 2017 and offers a quiet, crowd-free, luxurious space to hang out before boarding a commercial flight.

As you may expect, it's not cheap. But for celebrities routinely hounded by paparazzi in the public terminals at LAX and wealthy businesspeople and families seeking solitude, it's a safe haven offering the best privacy, security, and amenities money can buy.

Here's what it's like inside The Private Suite.

The Private Suite is owned and operated by security firm Gavin de Becker and Associates. It's located opposite the public LAX terminals, so there's no traffic to battle.

Google Maps

The Private Suite accommodates travelers flying on one of the 70 commercial airlines operating at LAX.

David McNew/Getty Images

It's the first private terminal at a major US airport, but similar models exist at airports in London; Munich; Frankfurt, Germany; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. My first impression was that it's intimate and isolated, in the best way.

Courtesy of The Private Suite


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from Business Insider https://read.bi/2BKwo2r