BUILT UNDER COVER

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 78, 1 April 1936, Page 12

BUILT UNDER COVER

GATWICK AIRPORT

One of the best-equipped airports in the world is now near ing completion at Gatwick, says a "Daily Telegraph" special correspondent.

I watched scores of workmen laying parquet flooring and beginning the interior decoration of the round "Martello" air station, which is to be a miniature city, ministering to every comfort and convenience. Far out across the, 196-acre landing-field other men were laying cables. for the three 1,500,000 candle-power floodlights which will enable the port to give a twenty-four-hour service.

Soon engineers will start erecting the Marconi blind-landing system, the most up-to-date of its kind: It wilj. consist of three radio beacons—one of them two miles from the airport— whose intersecting beams can guide a pilot safely to the landing ground in the densest fog.

The most remarkable feature of the airport is the circular station, rising in three tiers like a concrete wedding cake. There is nothing to compare with it at any other airport in the world. It is the hub of a "roundabout" which will deal with air traffic like road traffic in a busy city.

Six "spokes" project from the round tower. Each is a covered passageway leading from the central waitingroom.

An arriving aeroplane taxies round the tower and stops before one of these passages. Then a "telescopic corridor" slides out, adding some thirty feet to the'length of the passage and extending it right up to the door of the aeroplane. ,

Inside the station the traveller will find his every need catered for. There will be: A post office, telephone kiosks, a restaurant with open-air terrace; a sr.ack bar, a cocktail lounge; shops, and bathrooms, dressing-rooms and a barber's shop for owner-pilots and passengers wishing to dress for dinner before taking the London train.

Even the air-minded criminal has been thought of, for there is a small police station and a cell beside the Customs hall. On the opposite side of the waiting-room is a steel safe for gold consignments in transit to and from the Continent.

Crowning all these rooms and departments is the control-room, on the highest tier of the tower. Walled with glass, it has a clear view of the country for miles around. At night, in clear weather, approaching pilots can see its beacon lights fifty miles away.

A new Southern Railway station, Tinsley Green, has been built to serve the airport.