The history of US airports since 1945 is highly complex. It involves the history of technology and the history of cities, as well as important parts of US economic, demographic, and political history. In looking particularly at the relationship between airports and cities in the post-war period, it is clear that two important events were of paramount significance: the introduction of jet airliners and the deregulation of the airline industry. Though jet airliners did not create the issue, they nonetheless became symbols of the most intransigent program facing local airport officials—the problem of aircraft noise. Their introduction also required significant updating of airport facilities including runways and terminals. Deregulation prompted the wide-spread adoption of the “hub-and-spoke” organization of airlines routes and a period of often chaotic competition between airlines. In response, cities hoped to take advantage of the more fluid situation to attract more flights and more airlines. The results were often mixed. In addition to those events, the entire post-war period witnessed a dramatic expansion in the number of Americans flying, debates over the role of airports in local economic development efforts, and an increased focus on airport security. Those trends also presented local airport managers with a host of challenges. What exactly those challenges were and how well local officials responded varied from place to place, but virtually no place with a commercial airport remained untouched.
Introduction of Jet Airliners, the Planes That Roared
Not to overstate the obvious, the invention of the jet engine made the “jet age” of travel possible. Frank Whittle, a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer, in England and Hans von Ohain, a physicist who developed an interest in aircraft propulsion, in Germany developed simultaneously, but separately, the world’s first jet aircraft engines. While at the RAF technical school at Cranwell in 1928, Whittle wrote a senior thesis on “Future Developments in Aircraft Design.” In it, he explored two new possible power sources for aircraft—rocket engines or gas turbines to drive the propellers. Shortly thereafter, Whittle moved beyond the idea of having a turbine power a propeller to the idea of a pure turbine or turbojet engine. He filed a patent on this idea on January 16, 1930. RAF officials, however, saw little merit in his ideas and Whittle went on to other duties, including earning a degree in mechanical sciences in 1936 from Cambridge University. A year earlier, in Germany, Hans von Ohain earned a Ph.D. in physics, with minors in aerodynamics, aeromechanics, and mathematics. A flight in 1931 in a Junkers Trimoter had left von Ohain unimpressed with the plane’s propulsion system. While studying for his degree, he developed his own ideas for an aircraft jet engine, which he patented in November 1935. German officials saw the potential value in the devise and classified it as “secret.” Von Ohain then joined the Heinkel aircraft company where he immediately began work on a design of a jet engine. At the same time, Frank Whittle, encouraged by some of his professors at Cambridge, found private support for his jet engine idea. On April 12, 1937, Whittle successfully tested the world’s first practical jet engine. Though Whittle built the first practical engine, von Ohain was the first to have his tested on an aircraft on August 27, 1939. Whittle’s engine finally powered an aircraft on May 15, 1941. 1 Germany, England, and eventually the USA would all develop jet aircraft during World War II (WWII), but extensive application came only after the war.
While the military was the first to apply jet engines to aircraft, the civilian commercial sector soon followed. But just as the development of the jet engine happened outside the USA, so, too, did the first commercial aircraft applications. The British led the way with the deHavilland Comet, which entered service in 1952. By 1954, however, a series of accidents—including three mid-flight break-ups of the aircraft later traced to metal fatigue—resulted in the plane being grounded. 2 In the meantime, the Soviet Union launched the Tupolev Tu-104 in 1956. For the next two years, until a redesigned Comet entered service, the Tu-104 was the world’s only commercial jet airliner.
The appearance of the British Comet, as well as advances in jet engines and the company’s experience building large jet bombers, led the Boeing Corporation to explore the design of a commercial jet airliner. Boeing decided to finance the development of the new airplane—which came to be known as the Dash-80—as a prototype that would not only sell the idea of commercial jets to the airlines but also the idea of a jet tanker to the United States Air Force (USAF). The USAF signed a contract for a tanker version of the airplane—the KC-135 – in 1955. In the meantime, Boeing sought the first airline customer for the commercial version of the plane—the 707. Most US airlines showed little interest in the new jet as they had just purchased the first generation of post-war, piston-engine airliners, including the Lockheed Constellation and the Douglas DC-7. In ushering the commercial jet age in the USA, Juan Trippe and Pan Am took the lead. As it happened, by the mid-1950s, the Douglas Aircraft Company was also developing a commercial jet airliner, the DC-8, and Trippe began to play Boeing and Douglas against each other to get the most airplanes for the least amount of money. Pan Am’s orders for 20 Boeing 707s and 25 Douglas DC-8s ushered in the US commercial jet age and other airlines soon followed. Boeing beat Douglas into service with the first 707s flying Pan Am’s New York–London route in October 1958. The first domestic commercial jet flights began in December 1958. 3
The advent of the 707 and DC-8 challenged cities hoping to brag of jet air service as it would require airport upgrades. For examples, both airplanes could carry more passengers than their piston-engine predecessors as the Constellation could carry around 100 passengers, depending on the configuration, while the early version of the 707 could carry 179. While more passengers might require larger gate areas, more importantly the new jets also required longer runways. The Constellation could safely take-off from a runway less than 6000 feet long. The 707, at maximum take-off weight, needed 10,200 feet of runway (though a later version required only 9000 feet) for safe operations. 4 In 2015, the longest runway at Chicago’s Midway Airport—the busiest airport in the 1950s (see below)—is still only a little over 6500 feet long. Eventually, jet airliners would enter service that could operate safely from shorter runways, but that was well in the future in 1958.
The most vexing challenge, though, was the noise the first generation jet engines produced. Both the 707 and the DC-8 first flew with Pratt & Whitney JT3C turbojet engines. In a turbojet engine, all the air from the compressor is sent to the combustion chamber, burned, and exhausted through the turbine to run the compressor and produce thrust. The exhaust exits the turbojet at supersonic speed. The mismatch between the speed of the exhaust (supersonic) and the design speed of the aircraft (subsonic) meant that the engine was not efficient in providing propulsion to the aircraft. It was also very loud. However, shortly after the appearance of turbojet engines, engine companies developed new bypass or turbofan engines. In a turbofan engine, some of the air from the compressor bypasses the combustion chamber and turbine. With less air passing through the combustion chamber and turbine, the turbine has to extract more heat energy from the hot air passing through it resulting in a colder, slower exhaust, better matching the design speed of the aircraft and increasing propulsive efficiency. The cooler, slower exhaust also meant that the engine was quieter. 5
Rolls Royce developed the first turbofan or bypass engine, the Conway, in the 1950s. Though the Rolls Royce engine was used on a number of commercial airliners, both General Electric and Pratt &Whitney soon developed more widely adopted American versions of the turbofan engine. And while General Electric was first to develop an engine, Pratt & Whitney produced the first flight-ready engine, the JT3D, in July 1959. The JT3D was designed to be retrofitted on both the 707 and the DC-8. By the early 1960s, all US jet airliners used the quieter turbofans. 6 But quieter did not mean quiet. Cities and airport officials would push the aerospace industry to produce quieter engines from the 1960s onward. As a result, there has been significant improvement in engine noise, but the noise problem remains. 7
Just as it had led the industry into the commercial jet age, Boeing once again led with the introduction of the “jumbo” jet in 1969. The idea of a very large airliner grew out of conditions at airports in the 1960s. As the number of passengers expanded rapidly (see below), many airports became highly congested—more passengers meant more airplanes. The Douglas Aircraft Company first proposed addressing the issue by increasing the seating capacity of its DC-8. Douglas added a 37-foot section to the DC-8’s fuselage, increasing capacity from 189 to 259 passengers. The “stretched” DC-8-61 first flew in 1965. When Boeing looked to do something similar, engineers found that the wing sweep and landing gear location on the 707 would not allow for a simple “stretching” of the airliner. Instead, Boeing turned its attention to designing a new airplane. 8
Boeing began design on the 747 with the experience it gained in the competition for a very large military transport. Boeing lost the competition to Lockheed, which went on to build the C-5 Galaxy. Boeing, though, built on what it had learned to very quickly develop plans for a new large passenger jet airliner. Pan Am, looking to build capacity on its international routes, once again served as Boeing’s inaugural customer. In April 1966, Pan Am placed an order for twenty-five 747s, just months after Boeing had begun construction on the world’s largest aircraft manufacturing facility, needed for the massive new jet. The first 747 rolled out of the factory in Everett, Washington, in late 1968 and the company began deliveries in 1969. Pan Am flew its first 747 on the New York-London route in January 1970. 9
Like the 707 before it, the 747 revolutionized jet air travel. Depending on the configuration—one, two, or three classes of seating—the early versions of the new plane could seat from 366 to 550 passengers. And it could do so efficiently. The 747 had a lower cost per seat mile than any other jet airliner, lowering the cost of flying both domestically and internationally. It was especially efficient on long-haul international routes, where airlines could still make a profit while operating the plane at 50 % capacity. Later models of the 747 had a seat/mile cost less than one-third that of the 707. Further, the 747 ushered in the era of the wide-body jet as the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 and Lockheed L1011 soon followed. And while both these planes, especially the L-1011, could operate off of shorter runways (8070 feet vs. up to 10,450 feet for the 747), the Boeing 747 captured and dominated the wide-body transport market into the early twenty-first century. 10
While not all airports could accommodate the 747, mostly due to runway requirements, those that could gained some benefit from the advances that had been made in turbine engine technology. Even though it was much larger—the 747 had a fuselage cross section of 255.5 inches versus 148 for the 707 and weighed 836,000 pounds versus 336,000 pounds for the 707—its four new high-bypass engines reduced its engine noise. The 747 was not quiet, but it was quieter. 11 By the 1970s, though, battles over airport noise had dramatically slowed, if not completely stopped, the construction of new major airports in the USA. While...