Burbank Spent $1.3 Billion to Move Its Terminal Sideways

Hollywood Burbank is the airport Angelenos use when they want to avoid LAX — small, walkable, with the gates a two-minute stroll from the kerb. On 13 October 2026 it opens a $1.3 billion replacement terminal, and the project is unusual in that the driving motive was never a shortage of gates. The existing terminal sits closer to the runways than current federal design standards contemplate, and no amount of renovation fixes a building that is in the wrong place.

Replacing rather than expanding is expensive, which is how a fourteen-gate regional airport ends up with a ten-figure capital programme. The trade-off Burbank has been careful to protect is the one passengers actually value. The new building is deliberately compact, and the airport has repeatedly committed to preserving the short walk from arrival kerb to gate that distinguishes it from every other option in the Los Angeles basin. Getting bigger was never the goal; getting compliant was.

The opening lands in a crowded year for American airport infrastructure. JFK’s New Terminal One is due to open later in 2026 with 14 gates, scaling to 23 by 2030. Wilmington Airport in Delaware opened a roughly $10 million expanded terminal on 22 January. Across large-hub airports, capital programmes now run well into the tens of billions, most of it committed years ago and only now emerging from behind construction hoarding.

If you fly Burbank around the changeover, treat 13 October as a hard boundary in your mental map. Kerbside drop-off points, parking structures, rental car counters and rideshare pickup zones all move when a terminal moves, and the first fortnight is when navigation apps and drivers are least reliable. Print or screenshot the airport’s own arrival map before you travel. After that, the airport’s chief virtue — being in and through it in under twenty minutes — should reassert itself quickly.

Sources: Aviation A2Z, Simple Flying