to Central Park’s once-revolutionary separation of horse and pedestrian traffic. The new airport also included an instrument landing system on Runway C that enabled safe landings in poor weather. A radio beam guided pilots to ground-level rows of synchronized flashing lights, including powerful Krypton bulbs, bolted to a pier in Jamaica Bay. These lights at full power generated 115 billion candlepower.71
FIGURE 7. Runways on the sand: construction of runway “A” at Idlewild Airport, October 25, 1944. Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Long Island Division, New York Herald-Tribune Photograph Morgue Collection.
FIGURE 8. New York International Airport, where the most advanced transportation systems of the era, planes and automobiles, coexisted in harmony, 1949. Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
A temporary terminal and administration building was in place by spring 1947, as were three runways. The temporary terminal, a rough amalgam of concrete block and linoleum tile with just a bit of World’s Fair flair, was already larger than the once cutting-edge terminal at LaGuardia; the runways were also longer than those at LaGuardia. In spite of the rough condition, the airport’s scale impressed its main audience: aviation experts. Airlines were unanimous that “Idlewild is far superior … to facilities available at London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam or other big foreign centers.”72 Such remarkable facilities were expensive to build and maintain. With Tobin’s Port Authority now fully in charge of the most valuable air market in the world, the airlines had no choice but to pay the bill.
The Port Authority’s leaders had initially promised it would honor the original and very generous leases to airlines negotiated by Mayor La Guardia by generating most of its operating revenue from other sources, but there was no chance the new owner would honor these deals. The leases appeared to many at the time as an awful arrangement, and permitted anticompetitive practices such as volume rebates for the biggest operators that would limit competition. Mayor La Guardia had only signed these rates as a result of the airlines’ threat that airline operations would decamp to Newark if the city’s terms were unfavorable. The terms would have been equally bad for the Port Authority. Authority leaders claimed they were not fully aware of the financial implications of the leases when they made the case for assumption of the airports; Austin Tobin even claimed to feel deceived after the fact. Yet the unfavorable rates had been a matter of public record and had to have been known to Port Authority officials as well. Clearly, Tobin was determined to renegotiate rates after grabbing the airports.73
FIGURE 9. Temporary terminal and parking lot, July 30, 1948. Courtesy of the Queens 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
