L.A. AIRPORTS A HUB FOR FILM PRODUCTION.

Byline: DOUG IRVING Staff Writer

The helicopter went down not far from the busy terminals of Los Angeles International Airport, pinwheeling into a once-cozy neighborhood of small homes and big yards. The television crew loved it.

It may come as little surprise in this screenplay city that the local airports play a supporting role in so many films, television programs and commercials. But a report to be released today pegs the economic value of all that airport filming at more than half a billion dollars in recent years.

It also shows that, at the airports at least, film production has been a growing industry -- at a time when film crews have been abandoning California for other states and countries that offer them tax breaks and other incentives.

On any given day, LAX and three other city-owned airports double as some of the biggest sound stages around. They've drawn the likes of Oprah and Dr. Phil, Catwoman and the Shaggy Dog -- even a film crew shooting something called ``Wired for Sex.''

Los Angeles airports play host to the bright lights so often that they have a 10-person film desk to coordinate the productions. LAX officials occasionally have to sign confidentiality agreements because they can find out who won a reality show just by watching which contestant comes off the plane alone.

``We understand that people are here to catch flights,'' said Norris Davis, a superintendent of operations at LAX who works at the film desk. ``We try not to get in their way.''

Taken together, the four airports operated by Los Angeles -- LAX, Ontario, Van Nuys and Palmdale -- can stand in for just about anywhere. Some scenes from the Tom Hanks movie ``The Terminal'' -- about a man stuck in a New York airport -- were actually filmed on a giant set hidden inside the hangar at Palmdale's tiny airport.

The city's airport agency is also buying up a nearly abandoned residential neighborhood near LAX, where film crews have blown up houses and, not long ago, staged a helicopter crash.

It has an old Boeing727 jetliner parked at Ontario for filmmakers to use, left over from the short-lived ``LAX'' television show.

The Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation tallied the economic impact of filming on airport property from 2002 to 2005. In the report, it put the figure at $590million over those four years -- and that's only the portion of production that actually took place on airport property.

Then there's the equivalent of 4,800 full-time jobs, $280million in wages and nearly $1million in sales tax. The report, commissioned by the city's airport agency, describes the airports as an ``important -- if unheralded -- contributor to the health of the motion picture industry in Southern California.''

In fact, it found the number of productions filming on airport property nearly doubled from 2002 to 2005, from 108 to 182. More than half of the productions in 2005 were television shows; another quarter were commercials.

Filming at the airports still accounts for less than 1percent of all the on-location production that goes on in Los Angeles County. The most sought-after location, by far, is downtown Los Angeles.

``We like to call it the world's largest backlot down here,'' said Gregory Freeman, a vice president at the Economic Development Corporation and one of the authors of the airport report.

doug.irving(at)dailybreeze.com