LaGuardia Dawn 2011_b

by Greg Reed

Title

LaGuardia Dawn 2011_b

Artist

Greg Reed

Medium

Photograph - Photo

Description

Taken March 2011 at gate 8 at KLGA

New York City LaGuardia Airport

The site of the airport was originally used by the Gala Amusement Park, owned by the Steinway family. It was razed and transformed in 1929 into a 105-acre (42 ha) private flying field named Glenn H. Curtiss Airport after the pioneer Long Island aviator, later called North Beach Airport.[9]

The initiative to develop the airport for commercial flights began with an outburst by New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia (in office from 1934 to 1945) upon the arrival of his TWA flight at Newark Airport – the only commercial airport serving the New York City region at the time – as his ticket said "New York". He demanded to be taken to New York, and ordered the plane to be flown to Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field, giving an impromptu press conference to reporters along the way. He urged New Yorkers to support a new airport within their city.[9]

American Airlines accepted La Guardia's offer to start a trial program of scheduled flights to Floyd Bennett, although the program failed after several months because Newark's airport was closer to Manhattan. La Guardia went as far as to offer police escorts to airport limousines in an attempt to get American Airlines to continue operating the trial program.

During the Floyd Bennett experiment, La Guardia and American executives began an alternative plan to build a new airport in Queens, where it could take advantage of the new Queens–Midtown Tunnel to Manhattan. The existing North Beach Airport was an obvious location, but much too small for the sort of airport that was being planned. With backing and assistance from the Works Progress Administration, construction began in 1937.[12] Building on the site required moving landfill from Rikers Island, then a garbage dump, onto a metal reinforcing framework. The framework below the airport still causes magnetic interference on the compasses of outgoing aircraft: signs on the airfield warn pilots about the problem.[13]

Because of American's pivotal role in the development of the airport, LaGuardia gave the airline extra real estate during the airport's first year of operation, including four hangars, which was an unprecedented amount of space at the time.[14] American opened its first Admirals Club (and the first private airline club in the world) at the airport in 1939. The club took over a large office space that had previously been reserved for the mayor, but he offered it for lease following criticism from the press, and American vice president Red Mosier immediately accepted the offer.[15]
Opening and early years

The airport was dedicated on October 15, 1939, as the New York Municipal Airport,[16][17] and opened for business on December 2 of that year.[9] It cost New York City $23 million to turn the tiny North Beach Airport into a 550-acre (220 ha) modern facility. Not everyone was as enthusiastic as La Guardia about the project; some[who?] regarded it as a $40 million boondoggle. But the public was fascinated by the very idea of air travel, and thousands traveled to the airport, paid the dime fee, and watched the airliners take off and land. Two years later these fees and their associated parking had already provided $285,000, and other non-travel related incomes (food, etc.) were another $650,000 a year. The airport was soon a financial success. A smaller airport in nearby Jackson Heights, Holmes Airport, was unable to prevent the expansion of the larger airport and closed in 1940.

Newark Airport began renovations, but could not keep up with the new Queens airport, which TIME called "the most pretentious land and seaplane base in the world". Even before the project was completed LaGuardia had won commitments from the five largest airlines (Pan American Airways, American, United, Eastern Air Lines and Transcontinental & Western Air) to begin using the new field as soon as it opened.[18] Pan Am's transatlantic Boeing 314 flying boats moved to La Guardia from Port Washington in 1940. During World War II the airport was used to train aviation technicians and as a logistics field. Transatlantic landplane airline flights started in late 1945; some continued after Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy International) opened in July 1948, but the last ones shifted to Idlewild in April 1951.

Newspaper accounts alternately referred to the airfield as New York Municipal Airport and LaGuardia Field until the modern name was officially applied when the airport moved to Port of New York Authority control under a lease with New York City on June 1, 1947.

LaGuardia opened with four runways at 45-degree angles to each other,[19] the longest (13/31) being 6,000 ft (1,800 m). Runway 18/36 was closed soon after a United DC-4 ran off the south end in 1947; runway 9/27 (4,500 ft) was closed around 1958, allowing LaGuardia's terminal to expand northward after 1960. Circa 1961 runway 13/31 was shifted northeastward to allow construction of a parallel taxiway (such amenities being unknown when LGA was built) and in 1965–66 both remaining runways were extended to their present 7,000 ft (2,100 m).

The April 1957 Official Airline Guide shows 283 weekday fixed-wing departures from LaGuardia: 126 American, 49 Eastern, 33 Northeast, 31 TWA, 29 Capital and 15 United. American's flights included 26 nonstops to Boston and 27 to Washington National (mostly Convair 240s).[20] Jet flights (United 727s to Cleveland and Chicago) started on June 1, 1964.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaGuardia_Airport

Uploaded

December 4th, 2012

Colors

Embed

Share

Tags