American Wedding|Ontario International Airport — The Arrivals Kerb Anyone Can Stand On

The airport where Michelle's family is collected is Ontario International, thirty-five miles east of Los Angeles, and it is in the film for the reason every production picks it: LAX will not let you shoot at the kerb, and Ontario will. The terminals are low and sun-bleached and rarely crowded. A handful of gates, palms in the median outside arrivals, the San Gabriels standing behind the parking structure. On screen it reads as anywhere, which is the job. You can walk that same arrivals kerb today without a boarding pass. The airport returned to local ownership in 2016 and has grown since, but the scale is unchanged. Fly into Ontario instead of LAX and the first thing you see stepping out of baggage claim is the shot itself — warm air, a shuttle idling, mountains over the roofline. It is a better introduction to Southern California than the film gave it credit for.