Q. What is it supposed to be on the show?

A. An airport where Bullit keeps his jet planes, and a room overlooking that airport, where Bullit and Kaitlin play ping pong.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. The location isn't mentioned, but probably somewhere near Newport Beach (perhaps the John Wayne airport).

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 13 (of season 4), "The Case of the Franks".

Kaitlin wants her mother (Julie) to marry the billionaire Bullit. Taylor & Ryan want Julie to give Frank (Ryan's father) another chance. So a war of the romantics begins, with each side trying to help one of the men best win Julie.

Kaitlin is seen playing ping pong with Bullit, up in an office-like room overlooking an airport runway below. She tells him that if he wants to marry her mother, he is going to have to "step up his game", and come up with the greatest Valentines' Day gift ever.

She spots some private jet planes on the tarmac below, and asks Bullit if one of them is his. He raises two fingers (indicating that he owns both of them). Kaitlin comes up with the idea of Bullit offering Julie a flight to anywhere in the world that she wants to go.

Later in the same episode, after Julie has chosen Frank instead, Kaitlin arrives back at the airport in Julie's limo, and breaks the bad news to Bullit (who has been waiting in his jet for Julie). They agree to remain friends, nonetheless, and walk off arm-in-arm, across the airport, in a shot reminiscent of the closing scene in "Casablanca".

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. It's an actual airport (and a room overlooking it).

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. The airport is the Santa Monica Airport, in the city of Santa Monica, CA.

The upper room, where Kaitlin & Bullit are playing ping pong, is in the Supermarine Aviation building, which is located at 2828 Donald Douglas Loop N, at the same Santa Monica airport (where 28th Street meets Donald Douglas Loop N).

The later shot of Bullit and Kaitlin outside on the tarmac was shot just outside the same Supermarine Aviation building. The camera is looking at the south/southeast side of the Supermarine building (which faces the runway). As they walk off, Bullit & Kaitlin are walking north/northeast, back to the Supermarine building.


Here is a Bird's Eye view aerial photo of the Supermarine building at the airport.

And here is a map link.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A. The task was made easier by the fact that there aren't that many airports in the L.A. area. I assumed I could rule out LAX, because it would be easier to for them to use one of the smaller airports. The likely suspects were the Torrance airport, the Hawthorne airport (both very close to the Manhattan Beach Studios), the Santa Monica Airport, the Long Beach airport, and perhaps the Van Nuys or Burbank airports (in the Valley).

If I had had to find it based solely on the view from the upper room, it would have been tricky. But I was lucky, insofar as they showed a full shot of the building's exterior (when Kaitlin & Bullit were out on the tarmac), and that offered a few clues: I knew that the building faced the runway, and that it would be fairly easy to recognize (because of its shape), and that there were three tall palm trees grouped together right next to the windows (those same palm trees can be glimpsed outside the windows during the earlier ping pong shots). I could see that there was a red sign on the building, but I couldn't make out the name.

So, I started looking at aerial photos of all of the airports, checking out the buildings which faced the runway, and looking for those palm trees. When I finally spotted it at Santa Monica Airport, my next task was to figure out which building it was. I zoomed in for a better look at that sign, but all I could make out was "Super"... So I Googled the word "Super" and "Santa Monica Airport", and up popped with the website for Supermarine Aviation, which included photos of the matching building (palm trees and all).