By the time FAA was established in 1958, airspace had been successfully regulated and normalized in the U.S.; thus aviation marched steadily towards its consolidation as a large technological system. But during the roughly twenty years that separate the planning of LaGuardia and the airport congestion crisis around 1960, the traceable changes at the landside–airside boundary were relatively gradual. In fact it was the
technological continuity and its own consolidation into more formal knowledge (the planning profession) that kept the debate on the landside–airside boundary at its lowest. However, social pressures continued to rise as congestion started to hit most large-scale airports across the U.S. and Europe. The international scene of airport planning was suffering from similar problems across the board, and still under the not-so-distant shadows of the Second World War, the nationalistic temptation to form new systems from zero was certainly strong.
In the U.S., after the birth of the airport city at New York’s Idlewild, President Eisenhower’s special Airport Commission of 1958 reported that the future may
“require super-airports and at least six of them . . .they should be located at a
considerable distance from metropolitan centers and high costs could be anticipated”
(quoted in Chandos, 1956, p. 27). This piece of advice certainly paved the way for a possible reinvention of the airport as a system.
In the fading days of the CAA, presidential advisor General Elwood R.
Quesada took over the FAA and the tortuous mission of furnishing the capital city with a brand-new airport. Quesada put himself at the forefront of a team of FAA experts, plus Ellery Husted, a reputed local master planner, and personally took over the task of finding the right land plot for the new airport (Geraci, 1965, pp. 15–16). In 1958, once the preliminaries were ready, the New York firm Ammann & Whitney, a high-caliber engineering company that held in its resume nothing less than the George Washington Bridge, was awarded the contract. Quesada “zealously insisted that the passenger should not receive short shrift; instead the objective was to get them through the airport as safely and expeditiously as possible” (Geraci, 1965, pp. 15–16).
During the previous decade the voice of the passenger was mainly heard through the press and letters to the authorities. In 1961, travel journalist Robert C.
Ruark ironically described how “one of the more desirable aspects of the modern
airport is its capacity for serving as a training camp for athletes. I don’t take the long healthful strolls in the country anymore, I just travel by air.” For passengers the experience of traveling became gradually less pleasurable. In the sequence of a departure flow, for example, passengers would have to form long lines at short drop-off curbsides, be rushed by traffic drop-officials, and again form new long lines at check-in counters. Once documented, users and their companions had to walk down long aisles to reach their departing flights. In the end, departure halls were totally overcrowded because passengers and companions were not yet separated. The last nuisance was the imperative need to use stairwells (U.S.) or ramps (Europe) and to walk on the tarmac regardless of the weather conditions.
By the end of the 1950s, one more inconvenience was the exhaustingly long boarding time. “It sometimes seems to take longer to get to an airplane than it does to fly 300 or even 50 miles,” passengers complained to the New York Post in 1959 (“Jet-Age Progress,” 1959). Distance and delay certainly created a paradox. A year before, others papers such as the Sunday Star in Washington chronicled how “for the
commercial plane passenger, the average hike from ticket counter to plane was about 1/5 of a mile. Passengers transferring from Continental to American Airlines at the new Chicago’s O’Hare jet airfield must walk 9/10 of a mile from arrival to departure points” (“You Ride to Plane in Mobile Lounge,” 1962, pp. 36–37).
But it was the FAA that finally decided to remediate the crisis. On the one hand, the agency had to cope with increasing demands from traffic and thus the airlines and the travelers. Through its Public Affairs newsletter, the FAA (1961b) declared that “the magnitude of Dulles International Airport and the tremendous air traffic to be handled there in the foreseeable future caused the FAA to search for new methods of solving the passenger handling problems facing most airport terminals today. The Dulles terminal will provide the necessary facilities required to streamline
passenger handling for the jet age” (p. 2). At the time, airport facilities were often patched with temporary solutions that only remedied the issues for short periods. Thus the FAA was particularly “concerned with the tendency for airports to grow by the construction or extension of finger systems. Finger systems cause tremendous
inconvenience to passengers when enplaning, deplaning or attempting to transfer from one airline to another.”
But not all passengers agreed, especially because now they were less exposed to the elements. For the FAA (1961b), however, “the conventional finger system makes the passenger walk long distances through the fingers and additional distances to the plane, exposed to wind, rain aircraft noise and propeller blast from adjoining gates. This method often requires long and intricate aircraft taxiing” (p. 3).
In addition, the agency did not favor the loading bridge system used at some airports because it also “involves long walking distances thought finger buildings, although all on one level. It does, however, keep the passenger sheltered at all times.”
This is a very important assumption that the FAA makes with respect to the newest technology on the market. It discredits the system based on the above reason and the argument that they “also require costly, intricate aircraft taxiing and demands
precision positioning at the gate” (FAA, 1961b, p. 3). Nonetheless, agency officials thought that “by contrast, the normal highway type bus system in use at London, Frankfurt or Amsterdam cuts down the passenger walking distance” (Chandos, 1956, p. 27) (also known as channels in the UK). This motorized solution allowed the British to operate a very dynamic ramp at Heathrow where many aircraft could be parked remotely and perhaps have smaller satellite facilities as support. However, officers complained that the bus would “still require changes in levels and the passengers are exposed to weather, noise, blast and fumes during the transfer from bus to plane”
(FAA, 1961b, p. 9). So in the end, the FAA was in need of a new passenger-handling concept, not just at Washington Dulles, but nationwide.
In the case of Dulles Airport, what had to be finally reformulated was not only the object (terminal) or the system (airport) but its meaning (for example, it would be difficult to reinvent a seaport from scratch without understanding the cruise ship and the ship passenger, plus their in-between relationships). In this airport, those
relationships of mediation would be part of a negotiation process in which different actors pursue different interests.
The outcome would be a new kind of landside–airside boundary configuration, one never seen before, resulting in a whole new kind of airport. This section traces those voices (FAA, designers, planners, engineers, airlines, passengers, pilots,
journalists, administrators, government officials, and others) and analyzes their role in negotiating and eventually materializing a reinvention of the airport.