The Metropolitan Airport. Nicholas Dagen Bloom
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Borough Public Library, Long Island Division, New York Herald-Tribune Photograph Morgue Collection.
Austin Tobin now had the upper hand with the airlines. In fall 1948 the Port Authority dug in its heels, claiming that the leases signed with the airlines by the La Guardia administration would destroy aviation in the region and even the nation. It was the authority’s contention, and that of other airport operators who joined it in a new national association to defend their interests (the Airport Operators Council), that the airlines unfairly burdened airports with capital and operating costs that were unsustainable in the long term. The airlines in New York threatened to move elsewhere unless they could pay very low fees. But they were bluffing. The Port Authority had the upper hand as a result of its control of the three regional airports. New York was the number-one air market in the country, and the authority’s airport monopoly now established there could not be ignored. There was little time to waste, however, either for the airlines or the Port Authority. The new and more comfortable Stratocruisers, adapted from the B-29s of the war years, that the airlines wanted to use exceeded the weight limits for LaGuardia Airport. The Port Authority, on the other side, labored under the accumulated construction costs of $110 million at a barely utilized airfield.74
While the standoff included the Port Authority’s tricky gambit of allowing airlines to land aircraft but not let passengers use the terminal, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York (and future presidential candidate) quickly settled the lease issue with the major airlines (including Pan Am, American, Northwest, and British Overseas Airways Corporation, or BOAC, forerunner of British Airways), and the Port Authority. The settlement included a major increase in fees that figured in weight of planes and the costs of hangar construction. The new fee structure from the airlines in 1950 already generated 15 percent of the cost of aviation operations at Idlewild for the Port Authority and set a national standard for airport fees—a bitter pill for the airlines but one they had to accept. By 1951 the Port Authority reported that Idlewild, not including the millions required annually for construction or the related debt service, generated over $900,000 in excess revenues from operations.75
New York City and its uniquely powerful authorities and market power thus influenced the shape of aviation by raising costs for all airlines. The Port Authority had set a national precedent by balancing public and private capital in airport operation. The deal actually proved valuable in the long term for airlines and the aviation industry by encouraging long-term investments in much larger and more modern airports throughout the nation because of the lucrative fees municipalities could expect from airlines in exchange for their major financial commitments. By 1957 the Port Authority, for instance, had invested $167,100,000 in Idlewild alone; such largesse was only possible owing to the proceeds of a blend of higher fees and lucrative concessions.76
Crowded Skies and Highways
LaGuardia Airport seemed far from Idlewild by land, at least measured in crowded highway and street miles. For pilots at the controls of a Douglas DC3, a popular commercial craft at the time that traveled up to two hundred miles per hour, the descent into New York looked quite different. The airports actually crowded uncomfortably close together because the limited air-traffic guidance technology of the era demanded that such fast-moving planes remain tens of miles apart in the air in order to avoid any chance of midair collision. The new instrument runway added by the Port Authority in its 1946 plan eliminated a dangerous intersection of planes en route to Idlewild and LaGuardia, but three airports (including Newark) in such close proximity generated complexity.77
The total number of aircraft movements in the 1950s at Idlewild was still low compared with the crowded future, but the limited technological capacity then available meant that many precautions had to be taken over New York’s airspace. Pilots had to constantly radio their altitude speed and heading to ground installations, which then relayed the positions to traffic control centers. Directions to pilots from the control centers had to be sent through the same ground installations. What this meant in practice was overloaded radio frequencies that limited accurate position information. For this reason, controllers had to keep at least ten minutes (or about sixty miles) between arriving planes in New York until the mid-1950s to maintain safety. Competition between commercial and military sponsors of new air-traffic control systems delayed the implementation of a new and better system. Further complicating the situation was the unregulated air force of small general aviation aircraft in the New York region that had a free run (at low cost) at the city’s major airports. New York was quickly suffering as a result of the inadequate technology and lax regulation. In 1954, for instance, there was so much instrument traffic in the New York area that flights backed up, and during that year, 45,000 passengers experienced major delays.78
Federal officials installed new radar systems in 1955 to reduce backups and permit a reduced five-mile separation. Air control for the Northeast and much of the mid-Atlantic area shifted from LaGuardia to Idlewild in 1956, taking up residence in a cutting-edge air-control facility boasting the latest radar. Continuing congestion in the skies over Idlewild and other busy airports, and a head-on plane collision in the West in 1956, galvanized federal officials in the late 1950s to adopt an expensive program of flight-control modernization, including extensive long-range radar systems. The Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA, the forerunner of today’s FAA that regulated air control and safety) also established instrument-controlled transcontinental routes (essentially high-altitude, high-speed highways of the skies) in order to regulate what had been informal, often chaotic use of airspace by commercial, private, and military pilots using their eyes as guides. Airlines benefited from this process by, among other things, making transcontinental routes faster, safer, and more dependable—and ready for the jet age.79
As pilots closed in on Idlewild, there was still danger when landing over the marshes and through Atlantic fogs. In 1955 the Port Authority installed a flasher system on runway 4 on a dock that extended into Jamaica Bay. Pilots would be able to see the runway approach sooner, improving the chances of making a safe landing.80 By the late 1950s the Port Authority was busily extending runways, enhancing lighting, and laying out highspeed taxiway exits. The capacity crisis sparked and encouraged technological innovation. Idlewild was one of the first commercial airports in the country, for instance, to feature advanced instrumentation for landing. Instrumentation boosted capacity because it minimized the amount of circling airplanes had to do under visual navigation in poor weather conditions.
The Port Authority benefited from continuing federal subsidy as it made these upgrades. President Harry Truman authorized $500 million in 1946 for national airport construction and development that would lead to 3,000 new airports and improvement of 1,600 more. New York City was not the only city that benefited, but federal aid was essential to the development of the airport program nationally. Already by 1949 the federal government had spent approximately $200 million on airport development,81 and by 1965 that figure had reached $900 million. While New York’s airports received a relatively small share of this money (of $500 million spent on New York City area airports by 1965, only about 5 percent could be directly linked to federal aid), the creation of a truly national system would have been impossible without federal subsidy.82
Idlewild’s record growth positioned it during the 1950s as the second busiest airport in the country for all operations after Chicago’s O’Hare International and the leading American airport for international travel. The growth in operations was driven by the growing popularity of faster and more comfortable air travel.83 The level of service offered by the major airline companies aimed to turn flying into a predictable, comfortable, and luxurious service that would justify high fares. Most airlines suffered from an overcapacity problem in the postwar era because the growing size and speed of aircraft outpaced the market for seats on many routes. The big companies thus used government regulations to push out the smaller airlines that threatened to make overcapacity an even bigger problem. The government endorsed the objectively anticompetitive protection of the biggest firms, not only because of formidable lobbying by the most powerful airlines but because the government viewed an advanced, large, stable aviation industry (a Civil Air Reserve fleet) as a potential partner in military operations during times of crisis. Government officials wanted the best aircraft, and lots of them, for their troops in the future and were not necessarily worried about supporting what was most profitable.84