CHAOS AT LAX TRAVELERS WISH THEY WERE SOMEPLACE ELSE.

Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer

The signs at LAX read ``Welcome to Los Angeles.''

But for Donna Sandwick and thousands of passengers flying into Los Angeles International Airport after last month's terrorist strikes, the welcome mat is as frayed as their emotions.

``It was horrendous,'' said the bedraggled woman from Richland, Wash., stepping off an LAX shuttle last week to meet her ride a mile from the airport. ``Oh my God ... I need a drink.''

As every public official from President George W. Bush to Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn urges travelers to take to the skies to rescue a nose- diving travel industry, life on the ground at LAX couldn't be bumpier.

With the specter of future terrorist attacks on people's minds, LAX has closed its central terminal area to private passenger traffic, closed the parking structures, barred nonticketed people from airport gate corridors, banned anything resembling a knife and beefed up security to include the National Guard.

The price to departing passengers: Send-offs are remote; predawn ticket lines wind from one terminal to the next; passengers are patted down; cameras are sent through X-rays; and skycaps, once common at all curbs, staff but a few.

For round-trip passengers leaving Los Angeles, the worst is yet to come: Getting home via LAX is grueling. Taxi service, busy at some stops and scant at others, is sketchy. LAX shuttles, key to ferrying passengers to pickup Parking Lots B and C, are often too full to stop. Connections are iffy. Travelers, especially the elderly, struggle with weighty bags. The waits seem endless.

``Excuse me, I'm lost in L.A. Where am I supposed to go?'' said Daphne Araneda, 34, of Guatemala, struggling to decide whether to take LAX shuttle Lot B or Lot C to meet her ride. When the Lot B bus arrives - her best guess - it's busier than a New York subway.

While LAX officials, in conjunction with federal aviation and law enforcement experts, deliberate on whether to reopen the central terminal area to private traffic possibly as early as Tuesday, passengers, airport workers and nearby businesses shelled by last month's drop in airline service beg for relief.

The airport loses $1 million a day in landing fees, parking fees and faces extra costs for security. Up to 12,000 airport jobs and 60,000 hotel, rental car, parking attendant and food concession positions are threatened.

While Federal Aviation Administration officials point to LAX as one of the most secure airports in the nation, passenger service is one of the worst.

Some point to the half- to one-hour waits for LAX shuttle service at some terminals due to overcrowded buses.

Robert Lee landed last week from Houston, ``where they had their stuff together,'' only to find LAX ``treats you like dirt.''

``I ain't expecting chicken and biscuits when I get off (the plane),'' the 37-year-old L.A. resident said, ``but at least some service.''

Lee, like most passengers barred for security reasons from handshakes and hugs at the gate, emerged from the terminal alone.

Then he waited for an LAX shuttle to meet his father at Lot B, who because of a mix-up waited for him at Lot C more than a mile away - a common problem, parking attendants at both lots said. One shuttle passed, packed to the windows with standing-room passengers. Then another. Then another.

Finally, one stopped - a deliverance, of sorts.

``Everybody feels kind of frustrated because you have cars, you have money ... we pay these high prices for tickets, you get off the plane and get treated like cattle,'' Lee said.

Nowhere is the service worse at LAX than Lot B, where throngs hope to meet relatives as they spill out from the constant line of shuttle buses. Two large tent canopies provide shade. Hard folding chairs provide small comfort. Overhead, screaming jets lend entertainment. Four outhouses - generally busy - offer some relief.

A message board is the only way many passengers and their rides can find each other. ``Fr. (Father) Frank,'' addressed one happy-faced note. ``I'm here at the tent waiting for you till I drop dead. Br. (Brother) Eric.''

There are no monitors to announce when planes have arrived; instead, airport officials riffle through stacks of printouts, doling out questionable information.

``I wasn't expecting this at all,'' said Belinda Browning, 36, of Hawthorne, after almost two hours of scrutinizing 30 to 40 buses - she lost count - for her friend from Kentucky. ``It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't incommunicado. For all I know, she might be standing at the terminal, freaking out.''

Other passengers were disgusted more for the suffering of their fellow travelers.

``This is terrible,'' said John Ford, of Temecula, a flight engineer just off an LAX shuttle from a trip to Saudi Arabia. ``These little ol' ladies on the bus have nobody to carry their bags for them ... bags half their weight and can't get them on the bus.''

Some passengers prove to be good Samaritans.

An elderly lady, struggling with a mammoth suitcase, is assisted by a stranger so she and her oversized bag can escape from her shuttle.

``The driver never moved a muscle. You're on your own in this parking lot,'' said John Gregoire, 67, of Altadena, searching for his son and daughter-in-law incoming from their Fiji honeymoon.

``There is no help for the people. Nobody helps anybody. They trip over the railings. You get some help from another passenger or you're on your own. Everybody's falling over themselves, mostly the old people.''

``To tell you the truth, I'm scared,'' said Rosa Lombardo, 75, of Los Angeles, waiting for a friend from Paris. ``If you gave me a (plane) ticket today, I'd say, 'Thank you for the ticket, but I don't travel - it's too much of a strain to lift the suitcase.'''

Some passengers wished they had flown out of Ontario or Burbank - anywhere but LAX.

Like most people who have observed the central terminal since it reopened Sept. 14, Larry Brownlow, a boiler repairman from Redlodge, Mont., emerged from U.S. Customs to find LAX ``a twilight zone.''

And he'd just come from a U.S. research station at the South Pole, where temperatures dipped under 35-below zero.

``It's like a desert here,'' said Jeri Elster, 49, of Westchester, just before being patted down by American Airlines screeners.

``I'm like, dying here - I left the house four hours early because I thought I'd be stuck in a long line and they would be rummaging through my luggage - I even packed that way, with the shoes at the bottom.''

Screeners and airline clerks reported other passengers were just as diligent. One Delta Airlines ticket-taker said queues stretched at 4 a.m. from Terminal 5 to Terminal 6.

``The line is just ridiculous,'' said Delta agent Shari Mrkonjic. ``The most common thing people ask is, 'What am I going to do with my time?'''

Go to Starbucks, advised one screener about to be laid off. ``Drink slowly.''

Outside one of the terminals one afternoon last week stood eight-to-10 passengers waiting for cabs. At the terminal next door, eight cabs sat waiting for fares.

``There is no order,'' said one frustrated Yellow cabbie, complaining of the Authorized Taxi Supervisor contracted by the airport to distribute taxis throughout LAX. ``They don't know how to work this - passengers wait for taxis here, taxis sit for free'' there.

Federal and local law enforcement officials, meanwhile, continue to study ways to prevent terrorism.

Hahn and airport officials have requested the FAA grant a waiver allowing cars to park within 300 feet of the airport building. That would allow cars at the close-in parking within the terminal structures.

Airport officials say shuttles have been added to alleviate overcrowding. They also recommend that friends take the shuttle into LAX to meet friends in the baggage area. Skycaps, who depend on tips, abandoned Lots B and C because of flinty passengers.

``We're doing the best we can,'' said Harold Johnson, a spokesman for Los Angeles World Airports. As for reopening the airport, ``We're ready.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Gene Brown waits in Lot B at LAX, holding a sign to help him connect with guests arriving for his brother's wedding.

(2 -- color) Passengers arrive at Parking Lot B at LAX, where they are routed for pickup by friends or relatives.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer