Transport: Flagstad Field

Long a sore point with New Yorkers has been Newark’s virtual monopoly as the terminal of the Metropolitan district’s passenger, mail & commercial air traffic. No New Yorker has had so long or so sharp a knife out for Newark as New York’s flying

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Relentlessly backing any rival to Newark as long as it was situated in New York State he battled valiantly to have Brooklyn’s remote Floyd Bennett Field made the city’s official air terminal, even sponsored in 1933 a scheme for a metropolitan airport on Governor’s Island, which would have nestled under the city’s towering skyline and been suicidal to passengers and pilots. A year later he leased the land for what was to become a more practical project: to enlarge North Beach Airport on Flushing Bay, Queens.

In his mind was a vast plan for a combined land and seaplane terminal far outstripping anything existing in the U. S. Last week, first with a spade and then at the controls of a steam shovel, he gouged out the first scoopful of sand in his $13,000,000 project. The hiss of steam as he inexpertly spilled half the giant spoon’s earth near the waiting truck was not less searingly exultant than the blast that came from the swart, little Mayor of New York: “This will be to Newark as Kirsten Flagstad is to Gypsy Rose Lee.”

North Beach Airport’s present 105 acres lie on the south shore of Flushing Bay, eight miles by road northeast of Grand Central Station (in whose shadow most commercial airlines have their midcity passenger terminals), across the East River and the new Tri-Borough Bridge. Although $2,358,000 went into the land, runways, hangars, seaplane ramps, beacons & facilities for servicing visiting planes when Curtiss-Wright built North Beach in 1929. only schools, private flyers and taxis patronized the field. No line made it a terminus. In 1934 the City of New York agreed to buy it for $1,500,000, leased the property in the meantime for $1 a year, wiped out its $30,000 taxes. North Beach then became Municipal Airport No. 2 (Floyd Bennett is No. i) and when President Roosevelt aboard his yacht fortnight ago assigned $9,050,900 of Federal money to be spent through WPA on enlarging North Beach, the work got under way. New York City has agreed to spend $3,711,600.

In less than two years when dredging is completed, 310 acres of tidal flats raised, and hangars, runways, offices, hospital and post office are built, Airport No. 2 will be quadrupled in size and second to none in the U. S. in equipment. Four runways from 3,650 to 4,770 ft. each 150 ft. wide, will accommodate the largest transports; fog-free Flushing Bay, lined with eight monster hangars and swank administration and service buildings will be ready to receive seaplanes from Bermuda and Europe.

Since regular passenger flights began in 1919, more than 2,300 airports have dotted the U. S., of which less than 10% are scheduled airline stops. Most are already out of date, many are dangerous to big, heavily loaded luxury liners. Among the 16 odd airports serving Greater New York, none can qualify with the Air Commerce Bureau’s classification as super terminals (4,000 ft. runways in four directions plus two miles of clear approaches). But the metropolis has many places where a pilot can sit down (see map).

Newark in traffic volume leads not only the U. S. but the world. This year close to 300,000 passengers, over 4,000,000 Ib. of mail and over 2,500,000 Ib. of express will be handled. One hundred and twenty planes a day roar off Newark’s runways compared with less than 100 out of Berlin, London or Paris. But Newark is 14 miles and 40 minutes from the centre of Manhattan, suffers the resentful opposition of every loyal flying New Yorker.

Ten minutes and a mile farther away is the next most important landing—Floyd Bennett Field off the tip of Brooklyn. Smoother than Newark, superior in equipment and less hazardous to approach, its commercial activities are confined to a single regular passenger service—one American Airliner a day to Boston—taxi services and private flying. Third field is Port Washington, a temporary base for German and British flying boats and Bermuda Clippers. The 20-mile journey from Grand Central takes just under an hour. The great runways at Mitchell Field and the smaller ones at Miller Field, Staten Island are used by the Army; Roosevelt Field is largely taxi service and training schools. Bendix, in New Jersey, developing fast from the days when it was famed under the name Teterboro, hopes for airline patronage, so far has none. The two seaplane “Skyports” in the East River, at 31st Street and the foot of Wall Street, are important private landings which serve such potent business figures as Henry Morgan, Harry P. Davison, Roland Harriman and Rudolph Loening. Other fields—Flushing, Edo, Holmes at Jackson Heights and Jamaica—are important only to manufacturers of aircraft, students, amateurs and taxi services. Newark still dominates metropolitan air facilities, will continue to do so until ousted by LaGuardia’s North Beach scheme.

Touted enthusiastically by sponsors and press as the “greatest,” “biggest” airport, New York City’s new terminus lags far behind Boise’s (Idaho) 8,800-ft. runway; Berlin’s 14-minute convenience from Templehof to downtown and London’s new Lullingstone Airport’s area—700 acres. But none of these has New York’s seaplane facilities which might swell the total of all air passengers into New York to 1,000,000 a year instead of the 300,000 that now pass through Newark. Referring to North Beach Airport’s completion—its start happily coincides with Fiorello LaGuardia’s campaign for re-election—the Mayor of New York, with marked emphasis on the “I” confidently boomed. “Colonel Somervell and I will open it at Easter 1939, in time for the World’s Fair.” As an afterthought he added—”Why doesn’t some smart guy build a hotel here?”