New York Air Traffic Outgrowing Airports

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30293, 20 November 1963, Page 24

New York Air Traffic Outgrowing Airports

NEW YORK. The New York metropolitan area is fast outgrowing its airports and is trying to find a suitable site on which to build a new one. Apart from Idlewild Airport, in the New York City borough of Queens, the metropolis is also served by LaGuardia Airport in the same borough, and by Newark Airport, in nearby New Jersey. A small, fourth field, at Teterboro, New Jersey, is used almost exclusively by private aircraft.

All four airports come under the jurisdiction of the Port of New York Authority, a 12man commission made up of six representatives each from New York and New Jersey, appointed by the Governors of their respective states.

Idlewild, the best known air terminal in the area and only one handling international flights, has grown enormously since it was opened on July 1, 1948. More than 30.000 pasengers a day now use its facilities. Last year, at Idlewild, domestic passengers increased by 13.5 per cent compared with 1961. to 8.231,000. while the overseas passenger count increased by 13.2 per cent to 3.279,999. Corresponding increases in the number of airliners using the airport—29o,l33 take-offs and landings compared with 265,281 in 1961—mean that Idlewild will soon be operating at full capacity. Some of the increasing load, it is hoped, will eventually be taken by LaGuardia, where a 115 million 'dollar re-development proI gramme now being carried out will enable the airport to handle jet airliners. But LaGuardia, opened in December, 1939 and handling some three million passengers a year, is only about 10 miles from Idlewild.

I Part of the problem is that ■ the air space in the vicinity of the existing airport is

I growing too congested. I Port Authority estimates in-

dicate that, by 1965. airporta in the metropolitan area will have to cope with a total of some 21 million domes' ir flight passengers a year and about 3.7 million traveue.s arriving or departing on overseas flights. Last year, the number of passengers passing through the airports of the metropolitan area totalled about 17,5 million, including ootn domestic and international travellers. In May, 1961 the Port Authority issued a report on airport requirements in the metropolitan area in which the need for a new air terminal was documented. A number of possible sites were evaluated, but a decision on whether and where to build is up to the State legislatures of New York and New Jersey. When a new airport is built, it is expected to handle the growing number of domestic flights. Idlewild would continue to take international air traffic.

New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller and New Jersey's Governor Richard Hughes narrowed the search for an airport site to three likely locations. But later the administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency. Mr Najeeb Halaby. said they were unsatisfactory because all three places posed air traffic control problems. This summer, the governors discussed the issue again and said they thought the problems cited by Mr Halaby could be overcome at two of the locations. They called on the Port Authority to carry out new surveys of those areas.

One of the proposed sites is in Orange Country, in New York, about 50 miles northwest of Manhattan. Tire other is in Burlington County, New Jersey, some 65 miles southwest of Manhattan. Each governor wants the airport to be built in his own state, because of the economic and other advantages it would bring. Mr Rockefeller said recently: "We are both tenacious in our efforts to get this airport for our re-

spective states, but we are trying to come now to a reconciliation in our thinking.’’

Since it will take about five years to build a new airport, a decision will have to be made soon.

The whole problem was brought home to Governor Rockefeller a few weeks ago when an air traffic "pile-up ' over Idlewild delayed a nonstop jet airliner bringing him home from a trip to San Francisco.

When he landed, an hour late, he commented wryly: “This proves that we need a fourth metropolitan area airport—in Orange Country ’’