Airport fee settlement comes as no surprise to many; travel agents report few travelers change plans in dispute.

Last week's midnight settlement of the landing fee dispute at Los Angeles International Airport came as little surprise to local travel agents, or to passengers who for the most part did not alter their travel plans.

Local travel agents and representatives of airlines using LAX said few, if any, travelers altered their plans in anticipation that the airport would be virtually closed down on Dec. 4. They also said bookings out of LAX did not drop off in anticipation of the airport banning most of the major passenger carriers.

"There's no way that the airlines are going to not land at LAX and there's no way the city is going to ban them. The city is too important to the airlines and the airlines are too important to the city," said Ron Gunderson of Gunderson Travel Inc., a Los Angeles travel agency.

Representatives of the airlines said passengers who had booked flights out of LAX called about the dispute but few altered their travel plans.

"They wanted to know what was going on and whether their flight was going to depart," said Tim Smith, a spokesman for Dallas-based American Airlines. "What we have been telling them is that we are trying to work this out and have been assuring them that we are doing everything we can to make sure we maintain our schedule."

Smith and representatives from other carriers said they did not lose any business from lost or canceled bookings because of the dispute.

Just before midnight in Washington, D.C., last Tuesday night the carriers and the Los Angeles Department of Airports reached a tentative agreement over the city's new airline user fees. Those fees were tripled on July 1 from 51 cents to $1.56 per 1,000 pounds of landed aircraft weight.

Seventy-five of 90 cargo and passenger carriers that use LAX had refused to pay the new fees and as a result the city threatened to ban them from the airport starting on Dec. 4. Never before had a major airport threatened to deny access to so many carriers.

Under the agreement, the airlines will pay the full $1.56 fee under protest retroactive to July 1. If a court determines the new fee is illegal, the airlines will get a refund from the city, under terms of the agreement.

The airlines trade group, the Air Transport Association of America, had said they were willing to compromise and a more reasonable rate would be about 80 cents per 1,000 pounds. The airlines argued the new fees were well beyond what is required to operate the airport and claimed the city really wanted the additional revenue to hire more police officers and improve other city services.

The new landing fee of $1.56 is expected to generate an additional $40 million to $50 million in annual revenue at the airport, which last year had total revenue of $228.4 million (see related story opposite).

Current federal regulations require that airport revenue can only be used for airport operations, which the city has tried to change without success.

The city had refused to compromise on the new rates, saying it had been decades since the fees were raised. The city also said the new rate, which hiked the fee for landing a 747 from about $300 to about $900, was still well below what several other major airports charge.

Airline users of the airport have sued the city over the rates and a preliminary court hearing on the suit is scheduled for Dec. 6 in a Los Angeles federal court.

Before the agreement was reached, local travel agents said for the most part the public didn't seem to either be aware of the dispute or was confident a settlement would be reached.

"We haven't received any calls at all about it," said Susanne Reyto, the president of a Travel Agents International office on Wilshire Boulevard in the Mid-Wilshire district. "I think most people think that it just can't happen and there will be some sort of settlement."

Reyto said she too believed there would be a settlement because denying access to so many carriers would create air travel chaos around the world.

According to Brad Villaran, manager of Uniglobe Westside Travel in Los Angeles, "We haven't been hearing anything about it at all from our clients. No one has change their reservations or even asked about it."

A spokesman for Phoenix-based America West Airlines said the carrier's reservations center had received inquiries from travelers about the status of flights after Dec. 4.

"We have been assuring our passengers that we plan on continuing service at Los Angeles after Dec. 4," said Mike Mitchell, an America West spokesman.

He said the carrier had not noticed a change in the booking patterns out of LAX after Dec. 4. "People are continuing to book flights our of Los Angeles," he said.

Andrea Butler, a spokeswoman for Washington, D.C.-based USAir, said come LAX service bookings after Dec. 4 had actually increased from the same 1992 period.

"People aren't changing their plans at all," she said. "Bookings on our long-haul service out of LAX are running about the same as last year but our intrastate service (which is mainly to San Francisco) has actually improved, probably because we are offering some good fares."