Los Angeles. Your day put in the right order, so the freeways work for you, not against you.

Van Nuys is where private aviation in Los Angeles actually happens. It is dedicated to general aviation, it has more private terminals than anywhere else in the region, and the runway takes everything from a light jet to an ultra long range aircraft off a transatlantic sector. The catch is geography. Van Nuys is in the Valley, and the Valley is separated from the west side by the Santa Monica Mountains and the Sepulveda Pass, which is to say by the 405. At the right hour that drive is half an hour. At the wrong hour it is closer to two. See the Van Nuys private terminals for how the field is laid out.

This is why we ask what you are doing rather than where you are staying. If your week is in the studios, Burbank is quicker and quieter. If it is in Beverly Hills, Bel Air or Santa Monica and your flight lands in the afternoon, the pass is the whole argument, and it sometimes makes more sense to arrive earlier than you wanted to than to be right on paper. For a nonstop from London you are in ultra long range territory, around eleven hours westbound, and that category of aircraft is what we quote for the sector.

Three roads decide most Los Angeles days. The 405 runs north to south through the Sepulveda Pass and connects the Valley, the west side and the airport, and it is the single most reliable source of a missed appointment in the city. The 101 runs from Downtown north west through Hollywood into the Valley. The 10 runs from Santa Monica east to Downtown and beyond. Around them sit the canyon roads over the hills, which are shorter, slower, prettier and useless in the wet.

The morning peak starts early and runs long, and the afternoon peak begins in the middle of the afternoon rather than at the end of the working day. Friday afternoon is in a category of its own. A chauffeur who lives here builds a day in the right direction, keeps the difficult crossings away from the peaks, and knows when the canyon is genuinely faster than the freeway rather than just shorter.

One current caution. The coast road between Santa Monica and Malibu reopened after the 2025 fires but remains an active work zone, with intermittent lane reductions, overnight single-lane running and occasional full closures while slope and utility repairs continue. It is perfectly drivable, but Malibu journey times are less predictable than they were, and we plan them with more margin than the map suggests.

Award season runs from January into early March and is the densest period in the Los Angeles diary. Streets around the theatres in Hollywood close, the good cars and the good drivers are committed weeks ahead, and hotel forecourts on the west side operate to a different set of rules than usual. The Oscars is the peak of it, but the weeks either side are nearly as busy.

April takes the city east. Coachella runs over two weekends at Indio in the Coachella Valley, about a hundred and thirty miles from Los Angeles, and the drive out on a Friday afternoon can double. Summer brings Monterey Car Week up the coast, which is a flight rather than a drive, and Pebble Beach in the same part of California. In the background, the city is rebuilding towards the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will reshape movement across the basin in the years before then.

If your dates touch any of those weeks, tell us early. In Los Angeles the aircraft is almost never the constraint. Cars and drivers are.