Los Angeles ARTCC 

On March 15, 1937, the Department of Commerce Bureau of Air Commerce commissioned its 

sixth (the first in the western U.S.) airway traffic control station in Burbank, CA. A teletype 

notice to airmen on that day stated that all inbound flights from the control boundaries, or within 

the area surrounded by those points, must be immediately reported to the new airway traffic 

control center. All inbound aircraft would receive clearance as to the time and altitude over the 

outer markers, cleared as to time and altitude over the inner markers, and then cleared to the 

control tower for landing instructions. The inner markers were Saugus, Palmdale, Fontana, and 

Oceanside and the outer markers were Daggett and Palm Springs. 

The station, located on the third 

floor of the Union Air Terminal 

administration building in 

Burbank, originally had 

responsibility for airspace 

bounded by San Diego, 

Mexicali, Tucson, 

Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, 

and San Francisco. Controllers 

provided service between the 

hours of 7:00 am and 12:00 

midnight Pacific Standard Time, but demand required the hours be expanded to 24/7 within the 

first few months of operation. The station, adjacent to the Los Angeles airway radio station, 

comprised less than 400 square feet. 

The controllers did not have direct contact with aircraft. If 

they needed to talk to an airline dispatcher, controllers used 

the interoffice telephone line, already in use between the 

airport-owned tower and the airlines. For all other 

communications, they worked with the airway radio station 

personnel to send teletype messages. Those messages moved 

between the two facilities through a hole in the wall. 

Many aviation pioneers used Union Air Terminal, in 

particular, those connected with nearby Lockheed Aircraft 

Company, such as Wiley Post, Amelia Earhart, and Charles 

Lindbergh. In fact, the early airway traffic control station 

controllers saw Amelia Earhart off on her last flight. Earhart 

lived near the Burbank airport, where she honed her flying 

skills and worked with Lockheed to refine her aircraft. On 

May 21, 1937, she departed the airport in her Lockheed Vega 

Union Air Terminal, 1935

Amelia Earhart at Burbank

Lockheed plant, 1936
to begin her ill-fated round the world flight. 

In December 1938, the Bureau’s successor agency, the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA), 

changed the name of the en route facilities from airway traffic control station to airway traffic 

control center. The Civil Aeronautics Administration moved operations to 7th and Flower in 

Downtown Los Angeles in 1943, and then to a building south of the Los Angeles Airport on 

Manchester Blvd. in 1946. The center moved to its current location in Palmdale in March 1963. 

Union Air Terminal, in the northwest corner of Burbank opened in 1930 as United Airport. By 

1934 the airport had become Los Angeles' primary airport known as Union Air Terminal. During 

the1930s Lockheed Aircraft Company, adjacent to the field, evolved into one the nation's largest 

aircraft manufacturers, and in 1940 the company purchased the airport and renamed it Lockheed 

Air Terminal. In 1947, when Mines Field was expanded to become Los Angeles' primary 

airport, Lockheed Air Terminal became a secondary airport. Lockheed renamed the airport 

Hollywood-Burbank Airport in 1967. In 1975 the cities of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena 

bought the airport and renamed it Burbank Glendale-Pasadena Airport. It became Bob Hope 

Airport in 2003.