Skipping the scrum of a busy US airport terminal is no longer just for private jet owners. PS, the private-terminal company founded at Los Angeles International in 2017 as The Private Suite, now lets commercial airline passengers bypass the public airport altogether — and it has quietly expanded to four of the busiest hubs in the country.
The model is simple but operationally hairy. Departing guests arrive at a separate building, clear a private TSA checkpoint on site, then relax in their own suite until a chauffeured drive takes them directly to the plane. Arriving international travellers clear customs and immigration inside the PS facility, without ever setting foot in the main terminal. That means no queues, no gate crowds and no sprint to a connection.
The footprint has grown steadily: Los Angeles first, Atlanta in 2023, and this summer a doubling of the network with Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami. Those are four airports where the math ofConnections, congestion and sheer passenger volume makes the pitch easy to understand. LAX in particular has a reputation for ground chaos that can eat an hour of anyone's day.
What's arguably more interesting than the real estate is the service culture. In an interview with Skift, PS CEO Amina Belouizdad Porter — who came to the company from private equity and hotel development — described a business that deliberately does less, better. Staff remember returning guests' preferences without being asked, down to their usual drink. That kind of recall is something even high-end hotels and members' clubs frequently fail to deliver, and it's clearly central to why a demanding, repeat clientele keeps coming back.
Porter's framing pairs an investor's discipline with an operator's attention to detail — a company expanding carefully rather than chasing every airport at once. That restraint matters for travellers too: it suggests the service is built to hold its standard as it scales, rather than dilute into a generic lounge product.
Who is this for? Anyone flying commercially through LAX, Atlanta, DFW or Miami who values time and calm over a membership fee — frequent business travellers, families with young kids who dread terminal marathons, and anyone with a tight connection or a fear of the immigration hall after a long-haul flight. It's a premium product in a category (airport lounges) that's usually an afterthought, and its growth is a sign that a slice of travellers will pay real money to make the airport disappear.
If you have a high-stakes trip — a long international flight, a connection you can't miss — it's worth checking whether your route now runs through one of PS's four cities. The airport you skip might be the best part of the journey.
