At the exclusive terminal for the rich and the famous at Los Angeles International Airport, passengers are greeted with champagne and caviar, then whisked directly to their planes in a customized BMW.
The terminal, which for a steep fee allows travelers to skip the lines and pass through security without stepping foot inside the airport, was the first of its kind in the U.S. when it opened in 2017.
Now, it’s at the center of a messy business dispute.
Gavin de Becker, a security consultant for celebrities whose firm originally developed the terminal, has leveled serious accusations against the current operator.
An attorney for De Becker’s security and threat assessment firm said in a letter to airport officials that the way the operator, PS, is managing the terminal creates security risks, pointing to pending lawsuits by ex-employees. One lawsuit claims that workers loaded luggage directly onto planes without proper screening, which PS denied in a court filing.
A lawsuit filed in September by De Becker’s firm accuses PS, originally known as the Private Suite, of tricking the city of Los Angeles into extending its lease before the company was sold in 2024 to Groupe ADP, a publicly traded global airport operator whose majority shareholder is the government of France. The lawsuit seeks damages for reputational harm and lost business opportunities.
Over the years, the owners of PS — now Groupe ADP and before that a private equity firm — failed to get the proper city approval for the sales, De Becker’s attorneys have alleged. PS, meanwhile, pointed to an August 2024 letter in which a Los Angeles World Airports executive said that city approval was not required.
PS said in a statement that Gavin de Becker and Associates’ lawsuit is meritless, noting that PS associates go through an eight-week course “covering all technical aspects of the role, including safety & security.”
“GDBA is competing against PS for new airport opportunities, and the lawsuit appears designed to damage PS’s hard-earned reputation while using the discovery process to obtain commercially sensitive information related to those bids,” a PS spokesperson said.
Brandon Young, an attorney for De Becker’s firm, said that neither De Becker nor his firm has any active bids to develop or run terminals at any other airports.
A spokesperson for LAWA, the city department that owns and runs LAX, said it “maintains rigorous safety and security protocols” across all airports, conducting regular inspections of all terminals, including PS, which are “consistently in compliance.” The spokesperson declined to comment on the legal dispute between the two private companies.
A Transportation Security Administration spokesperson did not answer specific questions about PS and would say only that the agency “screens all checked and carry-on baggage on commercial flights departing from LAX.”
After pouring millions of dollars into developing the Private Suite at LAX, De Becker’s company sold its interest in 2019 to the private equity firm TPG Growth Inc., which in turn sold it to Groupe ADP in 2024.
In the August 2024 letter, which PS provided to The Times, the LAWA executive acknowledged that Groupe ADP had acquired PS.
De Becker said he remains a guarantor of the business, meaning he’s on the hook if anything goes wrong. He added that he has no interest in taking over the current operation.
“My focus on the LAX operation is for one reason only: My company is responsible for Private Suite performing properly under the lease — and my company is liable when they do not,” De Becker said in a statement provided by Young. “I am concerned about the airport going into the Olympics with these issues unresolved.”
De Becker, long known as a security consultant for government agencies and celebrities like Madonna and Cher, was appointed by Ronald Reagan to a presidential advisory board and wrote the 1997 bestseller “The Gift of Fear.”
In a highly publicized case, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tasked De Becker with investigating how the National Enquirer obtained Bezos’ private texts. The tabloid had published an article exposing Bezos’ extramarital affair with former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, now his wife. In a March 2019 piece in the Daily Beast, De Becker said his team concluded that Saudi Arabia accessed and gained private information from Bezos’ phone.
PS has expanded to airports at other major cities, including Miami, Atlanta and Dallas. Passengers can pay to get access to massages and manicures as well as chef-prepared meals while they wait to board.
Annual memberships range from $1,250 to $4,850, with additional fees per flight for private suites or communal lounges. Without a membership, the lounge costs $1,295 a flight, and a suite, which fits four people, goes for $4,950.
“If you’re looking for the chicest way to travel, this is it,” an Atlanta-based real estate advisor gushed in an Instagram video that appears to have been filmed at the Atlanta terminal. “As we headed to Italy for our wedding, PS completely elevated the experience for our family as we were welcomed with champagne, caviar, balloons, books and toys … and even custom hats with our wedding date. Are you kidding?”
When travelers arrive at the luxury terminal on the southern flank of LAX, they can valet their car and even get it washed while they’re away. Inside, they’re screened by TSA and customs officials, far from the teeming lines of the main airport.
“It’s basically an airport designed for people who never want to see the airport,” a travel influencer said in an Instagram video.
Keith Jeffries, who was the federal security director for TSA at LAX when the private terminal opened, called it a “tremendous” security asset because celebrities can avoid chaotic scrums of fans and paparazzi.
“When you have a city like L.A. that has Justin Bieber, or the Kardashians, or folks that create a security vulnerability … that creates a concern,” Jeffries said, adding that PS paid for the screening equipment and reimburses the airport for TSA and customs officers who are assigned there. He said that with closed-circuit cameras everywhere, any allegation of a security breach easily can be validated or disproved.
In a February letter to airport officials on behalf of De Becker’s firm, Young said that TPG Growth Inc., the private equity firm that bought De Becker’s interest in the business, did not inform the city that De Becker’s firm no longer was involved in operations.
TPG Growth did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2022, while it still was owned by TPG Growth, PS secured a five-year lease extension. In its lawsuit, De Becker’s firm accused PS of “crying poor” when it persuaded the city to grant the extension so it could recover losses sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic, when few people were traveling. The move was made to prepare PS for a lucrative sale, the lawsuit said, and also prevented De Becker’s firm from bidding to take over the operation, which the firm had planned to do when the lease was set to expire.
PS said the lease extension was reviewed and approved by airport officials “during one of the most disruptive periods in the history of commercial aviation.”
De Becker’s attorneys contend that when TPG Growth sold PS to Groupe ADP for an undisclosed amount, the city may have left millions of dollars on the table because of a section in the original lease that they say entitles the city to a significant part of the payment from a sale.
A spokesperson for the city attorney’s office referred questions to the airport. The LAWA spokesperson declined to comment.
Young said LAWA has refused to comply with public records requests for documents about those decisions.
In the letter to airport officials, Young raised security concerns about the private terminal, pointing to a series of lawsuits by ex-employees.
One pending lawsuit was filed in November by Hugo Garcia, who worked as an operations associate at PS for about three years. In the lawsuit, Garcia claims he faced retaliation for speaking up about serious security breaches, complaining that some managers allowed unscreened luggage directly onto planes. Managers were irritated when he asked questions about the breaches, the lawsuit said. Garcia was fired in 2024 for tardiness and absences that he claims were justified.
Sally Chan, an attorney representing Garcia, said that employees at PS are overworked and that exceptions are made for certain customers. She declined to make Garcia available for an interview.
“It became a VIP program for rich and powerful people, where security wasn’t prioritized,” Chan said.
Other lawsuits allege that employees were not given proper rest breaks.
The PS spokesperson said that De Becker, his family and clients have used the private terminal themselves more than 200 times since his company sold it, including 50 times since the company filed its lawsuit.
“If GDBA genuinely believed the safety concerns it now alleges, it is difficult to reconcile those claims with its own conduct,” the spokesperson said.
Young said De Becker has used the luxury terminal on five trips since the beginning of last year.
The post Exclusive LAX terminal embroiled in messy dispute with security consultant to the stars appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
