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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0037.PDF
10 January 1958 Impressions of America's New £60 million Gateway A has already been reported inthese pages, the new terminal-buildings of New York were opened—or dedicated, to use theAmerican terminology—on December 5. Before we describe our impressions ofAmerica's wondrous new contribution to international air transport, it is worthsetting out a few basic facts. Idlewild is New York's international airport, and,like the other commercial ports (air and sea) of the metropolis, it is operated bythe Port of New York Authority. Opened in July 1948, it has so far costabout £62,000,000. It is the world's busiest international airport, havinghandled nearly 5J million passengers in 1957 (170,500 aircraft movements).There are four runways varying in length from 7,850ft to 9,500ft, andtraffic control is the responsibility of the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Workon the new "Terminal City," the subject of this article, was started in March1955, it having already become apparent that drastic replanning of the airport would be required to handletraffic of the future—perhaps 11 million passengers a year by 1965. Heart of the new terminal, as shown in the photograph below,is the international arrivals building. It was decided completely to separate arrivals from departures: a single building to serveexpected traffic would have probably been more than two miles long. Therefore, only flights requiring Customs and other officialinspection were concentrated in the single building—asymmetric- ally disposed to the skyscraper-like control tower for aestheticreasons. Arch and tower are the dominant features of the terminal. (A symbolic rendering of the photograph at the top of the pagefortuitously forms the initials I.A., and is the airport's motif.) From each side of the central arrivals building extend wings in New York International BEFORE leaving New York on the record 6,100-mile El Al Britanniaflight to Tel-Aviv (as recorded last week), J. M. Ramsden of the staff of "Flight" spent a day looking round Idlewild's Terminal City. In thisarticle he gives his impressions of America's new port-of-entry. which each foreign airline has its own miniature terminal fordeparting passengers who are not subject to "Federal processing." From west to east the foLowing airlines were allotted appropriateamounts of space in which to express their individual design preferences: Sabena, El Al, Icelandic and Iberia (sharing), Aero-lineas Argentinas, S.A.S., Air France, Swissair, B.O.A.C., VARIG, Lufthansa, L.A.V., Alitalia, and K.L.M. This segregation of com-pany terminals is one of die best features of the whole design: each carrier has a self-contained unit and can handle its passengers independently.The American operators will also, of course, have their individual ter-minals. As illustrated in our pages during the past few months., muchoriginality has been devoted by the American airlines to the design ofthese individual terminals which, as indicated on the photograph, will bearranged around the oval-shaped perimeter of the terminal area. Con-struction of about half these has already started, and all of them shouldbe completed and in operation by 1960. Much effort has been devoted tomaking the new terminal lovely to look at as well as easy to operate; andthe landscaping includes a park and fountains. The whole of the passengerarea is illuminated by "a blanket of never-ending daylight" claimed to bethe world's largest installation of blanket floodlighting. A tour of the airport logically starts Layout of the terminal: 1, Control tower and passenger arrivals building; 2, air- craft arrivals area; 3, west and east wings buildings for foreign airline terminals; 4, old Idlewild terminal (still in use for the time being); 5, central heating plant; 6, Fountain of Liberty; 7, air cargo centre; 8, to Manhattan-Brooklyn- Long I., etc.; 9, site for Pan Am terminal; 10, Northwest's terminal site; 11, Eastern's terminal site; 12, United's ter- minal site; 13, American Airlines' site.
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