There aren’t many airports in the United States where the terminal building is itself the star of the show, but Long Beach is one of them.
The main terminal was built in 1941, designed by William Horace Austin and Kenneth Smith Wing, and adorned with murals and mosaics depicting aviation-related themes. It’s an Art Deco landmark sitting in the middle of a working airport.
XWind Studios has now released their rendition of Long Beach Airport (KLGB) for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The scenery is available now via the iniBuilds store, priced at around $16 USD.
A unique airport
Long Beach occupies an interesting niche in the Greater Los Angeles area. It sits close enough to LAX to benefit from the regional traffic patterns, but it operates on a completely different scale and personality. The airport is known for its compact terminal layout and strict noise regulations, and it serves a range of domestic routes with airlines including Southwest, Delta, and Hawaiian Airlines operating services to Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Honolulu.
What makes KLGB genuinely interesting for simmers, though, isn’t the airline mix. It’s the approach. Despite having a long runway, a displaced threshold turns what might seem like a straightforward arrival into something that rewards attention. It’s one of those airports that’s more engaging to fly into than the name might suggest.
The airport traces its roots to 1919, when Earl S. Daugherty established what is considered the world’s first flight school on the site, before convincing the city council to transform it into a municipal airport in 1923. That history gives the place an identity that XWind says they’ve tried to capture in the scenery.
What’s included
XWind describes the scenery as built from the ground up for MSFS 2024, with performance optimisation as a stated priority alongside visual fidelity. The feature list covers custom imagery across the entire airport, a modelled terminal interior, dynamic night lighting, and the surrounding commercial and industrial buildings that give Long Beach its wider sense of place.
On the practical side, the developer includes custom taxiway signage, PBR textures, custom ground service equipment, and LOD-optimised models throughout. A GSX profile is also included in the scenery folder for users of the FSDreamTeam ground handling add-on. That’s a nice touch, and something XWind has included in previous releases.
XWind’s growing catalogue
We’ve been following XWind Studios for a while. We covered their Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport (KGRB) release previously, and KLGB continues their focus on airports that have real-world character beyond just their traffic numbers. Long Beach fits that profile well.
You can pick up XWind Long Beach (KLGB) now from the iniBuilds store.