CROYDON AIRPORT

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 80, 5 April 1938, Page 10

CROYDON AIRPORT

FRONT DOOR TO WORLD

VERY LARGE AIR TRAFFIC

VARIED EQUIPMENT

The best-known air field in all England and one of the most; famous in the'world is Croydon Aerodrome — London's official Customs airport of entry and commercial air terminal, writes John A. Menaugh in the "Chicago Tribune." It is one of the oldest commercial flying fields in the world, having a history which extends back to 1919, when the ! first regular air travel began in Europe in converted war planes. .

Its green turf, smooth and close cropped as only English turf can be, is known y to hundreds of thousands of air travellers who have landed or departed there on some one of the eight foreign and three British air line companies which have planes zooming down or droning off it at intervals of ten minutes during most of the day.

To the eyes of an Englishman at least Croydon is a huge spider which .weaves its web of air routes all over Europe, Africa, Asia, and even to Australia arid South America. ; There is hardly,, an important city on any con.tinent' that cannot be reached by air from Croydon. Soon it may even be the transatlantic air terminal for huge land planes that fly the ocean from the United States of America and Canada.

THE LONG RIDE OUT.

v Let us travel from London out to Croydon and look around through the eyes of ;an American airman, one Fowler W. Barker, war-time pilot, now secretary of the Air Transport Association of America. This is what he saw and this.is'<the way he described a visit to Croydon made last summer.

Barker .speaking:

"I got a taxicab from my hotel in the hotel district of London and rode for fifteen minutes to Victoria Station: •There I transferred to a limousine and rode for" fifty minutes through winding, devious, narrow streets and highways. There was lots of traffic and'the pace of our machine was slow, I enjoyed the ride, but it did take time to get out of the* settled districts.

"Finally we came down Perly way to the field proper.. That turf—it was a rtfch green. I got out of the automobile and stood on the tremendous concrete- tarmac—that's the taxiway and loading ground near the terminal building and in front of the numerous hangars. It .was great to, s§e the expanse of field. ' ~',■(.-- "But I "noticed while standing, there that there \v^s 'a grea}; roll—a regular valley—in the middle of the aerodrome. It's a fact." I stood' there and saw a Lufthansa tri-motored Junkers liner land. After i^ touched down it rolled' completely out of sight in the valley and then came gently bouncing and jouncing up' and over the brim towards ttie terminal. I could hardly believe mf eyes. They lack the hard-surfaced runways of -American fields. '

ALL SOLIDLY BUILT.

"There were a number of hangars and the terminal right at the edge of the airport. The hangars were of the old style, high, with' inverted V roofs, but all solidly built' of bricks and 'masonry. Nothing temporary about them. I thought they were quite ■ a formidable obstruction. "The terminal building was quite a lot like Chicago's' terminal, but not done in the modern touch. It was m stone. There were wings and a central control tower. The building wastwo storeys high, but there was no second floor. ■ "Inside were the offices of the various air line operators. Each company has its own ticket counters and its own clerks and porters. There is no consolidated ticket office where you can buy a ticket on any of the lines. You have to go to the right place, it was strange to see the people of various nationalities and the men with, the strange foreign uniforms running around the building. "Outside there was a strange conglomeration of equipment. Imperial Airways has thr,ee different typess -of machines. Most' of them lookeoV like Taoats with wings and wheels. Some had four motors in a row,, some had two in the upper wing and two in the lower. They looked obsolete. The more modern note was a K. L. M. (Royal Dutch Airlines) Douglas DC.3 (an American machine) and British Airways' .new; American Lockheed Electras. '■■. ,]■■■■■' ;■■ ■•■•■■ •■

A RUSHING BUSINESS,

"Most of .the .business I saw the afternoon I -was there seemed to be going to these newer ships. I was told that British Airway* was doing a particularly rushing business. They are to have the fastest schedules' and' the ■ lowest fares to Paris. "Some of the pilots I met said the American- machines were fine to fly. They said the De Havilland planes which Imperial and.other English air lines operated were very light and fragile, often breaking .undercarriages in landing. They don't fly at night with-passengers, and some ,of the De Havilland machines have been banned for night flying." Croydon is a busy field by any estimate. Scheduled arrivals and departures each day number 102 planes, and in addition there is considerable private, charter, training, and air taxi flying from the field. In 1936 a total of 131,583 passengers arrived or departed. Up to August, 1937, another 108,914 used the airport. Compare these figures with Chicago s air traffic, said to be the busiest in the world. The year around scheduled landings and takeoffs average 90 each day, end about 135,000 passengers were flown off Chicago field last year. Chicago, however, handled far more mail, freight, and express than did all the combined lines at Croydon. Croydon covers 330 acres, of which buildings occupy 34 acres. This compares with Chicago's present. airport area of 320 acres, soon to be expanded to 640 acres. At Croydon planes can get a clear takeoff run of 3300 feet in any direction At Chicago the lortgest runway at present is 5000 feet, with the average about 2500 feet. With the expansion, however, the shortest runways' will be 4000 fe«t In length and ■ the longest more than 6200. ; As at all airports of importance, there is an elaborate meteorological service for Rilots, and the control tower agents keep track of arriving and departing ships through radio reports from these planes in the air. The control tower officers also give permission for land-ings-'and takeoffs, as is the American, practice, using both radio and light signals. . Only in recent 'months have there been radio landing beam facilities at the field. The British Air Ministry, which operates tho port, has now installed .Jiree types of landing beams —the Lorenz, Plessey.'and Marconi sys-. terns. Incoming planes, at their own choice, use the system for which they are equipped. There is considerable heavy-fog flying from Croydon. If the ceiling there is fifty feet or over, operations are continued with ships carrying the ,spe-

cial radio equipment and flown by specially-trained airmen. There have been, however, a number of serious accidents resulting from this type of poor-visibility flying and it probably will be restricted soon. In the United States a minimum ceiling of 300 feet is always required. At Chicago the winter minimum is 400 feet for regu-larly-scheduled flying.