The Metropolitan Airport. Nicholas Dagen Bloom
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the regulated system, airfares remained comparatively high for most American travelers throughout the 1950s. TWA, for instance, in the immediate postwar era still prepared entire planes for sleeper service across the Atlantic. Men and women dressed formally and dined on expertly prepared meals. The Lockheed Super Constellations also offered deluxe sleeper-plane service on domestic routes between Idlewild and Los Angeles. A twelve-hour luxurious New York-Paris direct flight added profits in the luxury trade for Air France in 1953. In the early era of flight, wealthy passengers even rode on their own planes with amenities such as separate lounges. Fatality rates from flying dropped so dramatically in the postwar era that plane travel became an acceptable risk even for families.85
At the same time, fares became more reasonable over the course of the 1950s because federal regulators held prices steady (while wages improved), and airlines realized that they could expand the market for international travel beyond the elite.86 Tourist service thus outpaced luxury service by the late 1950s. Tourist-class flights (made possible by cheap fuel, faster planes, and greater capacity) introduced by Pan Am in 1952 between New York and London catalyzed the expansion of lower-fare transatlantic service to the most popular foreign travel destinations.87 Tourist service proved so popular that it accounted for three-quarters of air travelers by 1957. Once airlines realized that planes with mixed levels of seating and higher seat density did not discourage travelers and actually encouraged business, economy (or coach) class was introduced in 1958 in order to crowd even more passengers on planes. A New York-London round trip in first class was very expensive in 1950: $385 ($3,607 in 2012 dollars). By 1960, however, that same trip in a more comfortable and faster jet was more reasonable at $350 ($2,710 in 2012 dollars) and a far better value in terms of time, comfort, and safety. Most jets, in fact, included both first-class and coach seating in order to achieve more efficient operations; by 1960, airlines actually designated half of their seats as coach.88
Flying was not yet for everyman, but by 1960 it was becoming a settled upper-middle-class phenomenon and a necessity for many business managers. In 1960 Idlewild alone handled 248,686 plane movements that shuttled 8.8 million passengers through the airport. Approximately 85 percent of the nation’s transatlantic passengers came through Idlewild that year, a reduced percentage from the immediate postwar years but still impressive for one airport. Perhaps even more impressive was that Idlewild handled approximately half of all of the nation’s international airline traffic that year. Airports, and Idlewild in particular, had been built optimistically, but rapid democratization of air travel quickly tested even those generous boundaries. The fact that Pan Am led the world’s international travel market, for instance, meant that Idlewild was already crowded.89
From Water Ports to Air Ports
The booming consumer society of the postwar years also swelled air-cargo operations at Idlewild. Air cargo boosted Idlewild’s competitive advantages by subsidizing many otherwise unprofitable or under-capacity international routes (air cargo could be stowed in the holds of passenger planes), helping Idlewild remain at the center of global air travel. Air cargo seemed financially promising because, as promoters noted in 1945, the New York metro region was already “one of the great centers of high-class package freight, which is the type most likely to use airplanes in overseas transport.”90 The region’s wealth and extensive trade were key to creating Idlewild’s early lead in the air-cargo industry.
The Port Authority leadership closely calculated the future of trade in the region and the nation. After the war, the Port Authority adopted additional new technologies for the maintenance of the port’s supremacy. These investments, planned by the authority’s able team of economists and engineers, proved crucial to the region’s future health. At the docks, this would mean in the 1950s the creation of a modern, containerized shipping facility in Newark-Elizabeth. These new facilities, made possible in part by generous deals to protect current longshoremen, in the long term eliminated the raison d’être for much of the aging port infrastructure and unionized staff on New York’s waterfront. Air cargo was also a new frontier. The service may have been expensive compared with traditional means of shipping (almost one-third more expensive), but the high value or time sensitivity of the cargo more than compensated for the additional costs. In addition, combining passenger flights and cargo flights kept many routes relatively profitable for airlines.
New York built on its leadership of oceangoing trade as it entered the modern air-cargo era. Freight forwarders of the maritime era, who handled paperwork for international shipping, made a successful transition from ocean vessels to airplanes because they realized that planes represented just another way to move goods faster and over greater distances. They understood that “forwarding is a complex, many faceted service,” and they had to be “expert in paperwork that covers the spectrum of U.S. and foreign government regulations; and had to be capable of performing a full range of ground services between the shipper and the airline.”91 New York’s history as a global center of commerce gave it a significant advantage and helped secure the city as an early leader in air cargo.
The defense industry also played a role in inspiring and subsidizing this service. The Berlin airlift is frequently cited as a key demonstration of the potential for airfreight in the postwar period because a city’s basic needs were sustained by air cargo alone for months. Just as important were the surplus aircraft sold off at war’s end. New Yorkers quickly jumped into this profitable game. New York was, after all, in its last years as the nation’s leading industrial region and still produced many high-value industrial products, such as machine parts and business machines. Sperry’s vast electronics plant in Lake Success on Long Island was just one of many Long Island enterprises that benefited from the transition of wartime contracts to both Cold War defense spending and the rise in commercial aviation.
Seaboard and Western Airlines, for instance, started with one air freighter in May 1947 and operated solely in the freight business between New York and European points. The founders of the company had been part of the Air Transport Command during the war, which distinguished itself by flying almost anything anywhere under almost any conditions, and they also had experience in aviation insurance before the war. About 40 percent of the company’s tonnage was in wearing apparel, accessories, and textiles, not just high-value industrial items like machine parts. By 1948, the company had five planes in constant rotation and, in fact, got a profitable bump from the contract it secured during the Berlin airlift.92
It did not hurt the development of aviation in the region that Long Island was, by the end of World War II and during the height of the Cold War, one of the nation’s aviation hubs, with massive plants and operations of Grumman, Republic, Fairchild, and Sperry driving industrial growth. So important was aviation on Long Island that in 1954, for instance, the industry accounted for 45.4 percent of Nassau-Suffolk’s total manufacturing employment. The contracts generated by the Korean War mainlined federal cash to these booming suburbs. Even though this high level of aircraft employment was not maintained in the long term, the importing and exporting of advanced electronics, machine tools, and other materials needed for the aviation business boosted Idlewild’s air-cargo industry for decades.93
The postwar defense industrial complex provided key subsidies for the emerging air-cargo business. Not only was the technology for air-cargo planes pioneered during the war and after (Hercules turboprop C-130s easily became cargo carriers), but also “propping up the airfreight business were fat contracts channeled to the carriers by the government and the Defense Department. In fiscal 1956, the Pentagon spent a whopping $67.5 million to ship goods and personnel by commercial carriers.” The Flying Tiger line alone received almost $3 million in contracts from the military air transportation service.94 The Eisenhower administration also promoted air cargo by encouraging federal agencies to use civil cargo airlift. Volume reduced costs and improved systems for everyone, not just the military.95
The air-cargo center at Idlewild, dedicated in 1956, was its own Terminal City for cargo. The four warehouses and five buildings provided space where the freight forwarders, customs inspection, and quarantine could all be conducted. Separate hangars of ever-increasing size and complexity sheltered planes that carried this complex and popular trade. New York’s cargo companies were also able to leverage the growing number of passenger routes by including cargos in the holds of