Los Angeles International Airport has just installed free wi-fi…well, free up to a point. I'm glad they did it but the free part stops at 45 minutes and then it's $4.95 for an hour or $7.95 for an uninterrupted 24-hour period. God help you if you needed a 24-hour uninterrupted period of Internet access at an airport. I can't think of too many likely scenarios where you would apart from having to live there for a day or two at a time.
45 minutes for free seems a bit stingy for a place that urges you to get there 90 minutes early. On the other hand, I don't recall too many places at LAX where I would feel comfy to sit and work on my laptop. I can recall spots at some airports — San Francisco, Las Vegas and Indianapolis — where I found a table to work on and didn't feel I was hogging a place where someone needed to sit to dine. I've written all or most of some assignment in an airport when they had such tables but never managed to write much of anything at LAX except in some V.I.P. lounge…and I have an unerring knack for either travelling on an airline that doesn't have a club or not being a member of the one they do have in my terminal. This is one of the trade-offs, I guess, for flying Southwest a lot.
I know there are memberships you can purchase and certain credit cards you can buy that will get you into every lounge but I don't fly that much and I don't really want most of what they have to offer. I don't need the snacks and the stock market ticker and the sports headlines and the beverages…and while the cute lady in the French Maid outfit is nice, all I really want is a place to work on my laptop where I can hear when they call my flight or announce delays. Doesn't seem like a lot to ask.