LAX Airport Filming Moratorium to Begin Sooner This Year

An annual holiday season moratorium on TV and movie shoots at Los Angeles International Airport is going into effect sooner than usual this year, the city’s permitting office stated in a production alert this week.

LAX won’t host feature, TV or commercial shoots between Oct. 25, 2024, and Jan. 2, 2025, FilmLA wrote in the note. The LAX Film office’s website notes that, traditionally, “Filming takes place at LAX each day throughout the year with the exception of the week of Thanksgiving and the week between Christmas and New Year.”

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When asked by The Hollywood Reporter about the change, a spokesperson for FilmLA noted, “LAX has an annual moratorium on filming around the holidays with the dates varying slightly from year to year and subject to change. Typically, the moratorium covers the weeks before and after the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, as these are some of the most highly trafficked days of the year for the airport. Due to current requests, availability, and the long lead times that are required for clearances needed to film on the property, the moratorium window was moved up a bit this year.”

LAX has been in the process of a $30 billion multiyear Capital Improvement Program to upgrade terminals, facilities and accessibility, with 22 active projects in the works as part of that plan. Last year saw about 53 million domestic travelers, an uptick of about 7 percent year-over-year.

Overall, film shoots in Los Angeles County have declined this year across multiple categories, with reality TV shoots falling the most (56 percent year-over-year) during the April to June quarter, the latest available report from FilmLA. Feature production fell 3 percent and commercial production dropped 5 percent in that frame.

FilmLA’s production alert notes that for LAX filming this year, “Any requests for October 25th must be submitted by October 16th. The first possible shoot date in January will be January 13th.”

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