HUGE STEEL AIRPORT

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 70, 15 December 1932, Page 7

HUGE STEEL AIRPORT

Scheme for London DEVELOPING AVIATION (Reuter —Special to “The Dominion.”) Spectacular schemes for the development of civil aviation are now tinder consideration in Britain. One idea is to build a huge steel airport over the wilderness of slums and railway lines behind King’s Cross railway station, at a cost of about five million pounds, A Bill to obtain Parliamentary sanction for this plan sponsored by Mr. Craven Ellis, M.P., will, it is understood, be submitted during the coming session. A Great “Wheel.” The port is designed in the form of a great “wheel” of which the circumference and spokes form the landing tracks. It will be supported at a height of about 120 feet by a series of steel buildings. Some of the new buildings will be hotels for air passengers, restaurants, motor-coach stations and offices, while others will be in the form of flats, at low rentals, to house those families displaced from the slums by the necessary clearance- . for the scheme. The flats will be specially insulated against the sound of the aeroplanes overhead. As the aeroplanes land on one of the rnnwaysr of The great wheel, they will taxi to a central point at which a series of lifts will be waiting to convey passengers to the ground. The whole scheme, of course, is still in embryonic stages—but if it comes to fruition, its promoters envisage the possibility of a similar airport for the Midlands to be erected at Leeds. To New York in 65 Hours. Another ambitious plan is the one which Imperial Airways have been considering for some time now—the possi-

bility of establishing a regular air route between Great Britain and the United States, with stops at the Azores and Bermuda. The four-thousand mile journey would take sixty-five hours. The scheme would be worked in conjunction with the official American and French lines, Pan-American Airways and Aero-Postale, and each company., would operate one section. France would take over the route to the Azores, Britain would run the most dif ficult part of the service—the 1880-mile mid-ocean flight between the Azores and Bermuda, while America would control the Bermuda-New York route. An official of Imperial Airways stated in an interview that there were certain technical obstacles in the way of the scheme at present, but that experts were working hard to remove them. It might even be possible, later on, to establish a similar direct service between Britain and Canada.