>> NARRATOR: Fasten your
seat belts, make sure your trays are in their upright position,
and prepare yourselves for a journey through the history of
airfields: from primitive farmer's fields to the
constantly evolving and expanding multi-mile layouts of
today. Now "International airports"
on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> <font color="#FFFF00">[Captioning sponsored by
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS]</font> You probably think keeping a
430-ton airplane flying is just a physics problem.
Think again. The real challenge starts when
the plane's back on the ground. Consider for a moment the
difficulties facing modern airports as they link and shrink
our busy world. They are models of intricately
coordinated organization, symphonies of managed chaos and
unexpected change as they send more people further, faster.
Over 72,000 of us hurl ourselves into the air on thousands of
planes every hour of every day and safely land anywhere-- from
Anchorage to Zurich-- in less time than it takes to read the
Sunday newspaper. 50 years ago it took more than a
day to fly from Los Angeles to Japan.
Today, a flight from L.A.X. to the new Kansai International
Airport takes less than 14 hours.
Kansai features the latest trend in airport construction.
It is built on a 5.6 million- square-foot man-made island in
the middle of the ocean. Kansai is a response to the
overwhelming need for more airport services in a place
where encroaching urban sprawl and a lack of available land
make a big, noisy downtown airport undesirable.
>> GEOFFREY AREND: It's a brilliant concept.
To look at... We think, "Well, wouldn't we
rather land... closer to the action, closer to where we
really want to be?" The truth of the matter is, we
want to land where we can get in and out and get the minimum
hassle in terms of being able to move through the facilities.
And Kansai certainly offers that.
>> NARRATOR: Workers spent two years reclaiming land from the
sea as a foundation for the airport, filling a massive
rectangular seawall with 6,357 million cubic feet of earth.
They built a 2.3-mile-long, two- tiered access bridge for trains
and cars. Plus, they included a hotel,
shopping complex, observation deck, pedestrian walkways,
administration buildings, street lamps, dozens of
restrooms and everything else you'd find in a small city.
First conceived back in 1968, the facility finally opened in
1994 as Japan's first 24-hour airport, operating a 2.1-mile-
long runway and an average of 319 flights per day.
The usual array of security measures, gates and ticketing
counters are housed in a terminal designed to reflect the
culture and architecture of the region.
>> ROBERT OLISLAGERS: The concept of building offshore
airports and airports in locations where you otherwise
might not have expected them are becoming more and more the
vogue. >> NARRATOR: There are risks, of
course, to building an airport at sea.
Engineers expected Kansai to settle a little.
Unfortunately, it is settling faster than engineers expected,
at a rate of nearly four feet per year, and officials are
scrambling for a solution. It hasn't been a smooth ride
to Kansai from Kitty Hawk, but it has been an exciting
evolution. Aviation and airports have grown
together into multibillion- dollar industries that do far
more than provide planes with places to land, but that's how
they began at the turn of the last century.
>> AREND: The initial airports were little more than
afterthoughts. They were grass fields that were
out in the middle of a farmer's pasture, little
reception areas for passengers. >> NARRATOR: Farmers' pastures
were good locations because they were flat, clear, and the farmer
usually had reliable weather information for the pilots.
Partly as a by-product of the first World War, air travel
caught on more quickly in Europe than in the United States.
Roads and railways had been destroyed, and often the easiest
path from one country to another was by air.
The war also produced experienced pilots.
European governments subsidized airports in London, Paris and
Berlin, where large facilities were modeled on the grand train
stations of the 19th century. Passengers merely walked from a
large foyer out to a single gate or onto an open field.
In America, a spectator sport full of daredevils would be
transformed by the post office into a lucrative courier service
for the mail. >> AREND: The airlines were
getting a subsidy to carry mail in their very earliest stages.
As a matter of fact, they really didn't want to carry passengers,
because they didn't have to feed the mail.
They just put it on the plane. It was a simple process.
>> NARRATOR: It was also a deadly one, as ill-equipped
pilots flew unscheduled routes through unpredictable weather.
31 of the first 40 pilots hired by the postal service in 1919
died in crashes within six years.
In response, the postal service opened their airmail operation
to private contractors who bid on specific routes.
But that would all change with Walter Folger Brown's
appointment as Postmaster General in 1929.
Brown encouraged commercial aviation by forcing ragtag
independent airlines to merge into a handful of large ones.
>> R.E.G. DAVIS: When he took over, there were about 42 little
airlines in the United States. He said, "We want a proper
national system." >> NARRATOR: In 1927, the
aviation industry was bolstered by a public relations event
almost as monumental as the discovery of flight itself.
>> LOWELL THOMAS (<i> over radio</i> ): This is Lowell Thomas in New
York. He made it!
Charles A. Lindbergh, Lucky Lindy as they call him, landed
at Le Bourget Airport... >> NARRATOR: Lindbergh became
the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic,
landing in Paris in his Spirit of St. Louis on May 21,
thus opening the age of transatlantic international air
travel. >> AREND: What Charles Lindbergh
did for commercial aviation has been, to a large extent,
overlooked. He'd take his Spirit Of St.
Louis into a town, he'd land at the farmer's field at the edge
of town, be escorted to the steps of City Hall.
The Mayor would come out and hand Charles Lindbergh the key
to the city. And in most cases-- a week, a
month later-- the city would float a bond for a half a
million dollars and build an airport.
>> NARRATOR: But what, exactly, was an airport?
Was it a kind of train station? An open field?
>> OLISLAGERS: As land became more scarce and more costly, it
became obvious that you couldn't have these very large land
sections dedicated strictly for an all-field type of airport.
And so, therefore, the whole runway concept was developed.
>> NARRATOR: But where to put the runway?
In 1929, the Lehigh Portland Cement Company sponsored a
competition that produced some curious results.
One submission had airplanes landing on runways suspended
atop city skyscrapers. >> DEBORAH G. DOUGLAS: But they
loved the idea of gridding out patterns, and so there's
aesthetically wonderful patterns: stars, spokes.
The designs that appeared in this airport competition are
done by architects, for the most part, who had no experience in
airport design, and also never seem to have been hired since.
>> NARRATOR: Landing airplanes on top of skyscrapers may have
been farfetched, but landing them on water soon became
commonplace. During the early 1930s, the
epitome of passenger plane travel was the luxurious flying
boat, an innovative airplane that used its smooth, reinforced
underbelly to take off and land. All one needed was a few hundred
feet of calm seas and a dock. >> OLISLAGERS: In fact, the very
first passenger airline actually started as a seaplane service
in St. Petersburg, Florida. And in the early days, the
seaplanes were very popular. >> NARRATOR: Miami's Dinner Key
became America's very first international airport,
offering trips to southern international destinations on
Pan-American airlines. In fact, the original terminal
at Dinner Key was a houseboat. One prominent visitor to Miami's
Dinner Key was New York's Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who
wouldn't be satisfied until his city built the greatest airport
in the world. >> NARRATOR: "International
Airports" will return on <i>Modern Marvels.</i>
>> Narrator: We now return to "International Airports"
on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> International passenger service
was burgeoning in Europe between the wars.
In Hamburg, Germany, for instance, an innovative brick
terminal was handling 62 passengers a day when it was
completed in 1929. Efficiency and organization
became a keystone as architects built new airports in places
like Germany, France and England.
This attention to efficient traffic flow is apparent at
London's Gatwick Airport, which opened for international
passenger service in 1936. >> GEOFFREY AREND: The lovely
thing about Gatwick-- and it should be pointed out that the
original Gatwick terminal was a modern miracle in that it didn't
take a long distance to get from the front door to the airplane--
that it had a circular design, much like a beehive at the end
of a finger, and it had covered walkways out to the airplanes.
It had many of the elements that you see today in a modern
airport. >> NARRATOR: The beehive
terminal allowed a plane landing at Gatwick's open field runway
to park at one of the many gates rather than one or two gates
that handled Gatwick's roughly a dozen daily flights.
It also included telescoping canopies that could protrude
from the terminal out to a loading airplane like a spoke
on a wheel. This innovation kept passengers
protected from the elements, evolving into the loading ramps
used today. Access to the beehive was
through an underground walkway.
Critics complained that the circular gate left no room for
expansion, but in fact, the design allowed for multiple
beehives throughout the airport. In America, New Jersey's Newark
Airport was the world's busiest in 1935, with 30 flights a day.
Handling only domestic flights, Newark was not an international
airport, but it inadvertently inspired one.
>> AREND: Newark Airport was the aerial gateway for New York
City. In fact, Mayor La Guardia had a
flight on American Airlines from Chicago in 1937, and he landed
at Newark, and he told the pilot, "No, my ticket says New
York, and I want you to take me there."
So, they took off from Newark and flew-- it was a press gag,
of course-- but they flew to Floyd Bennett Field.
>> NARRATOR: Floyd Bennett Field was New York's official airport,
but it was further from Manhattan than Newark was, so
the postal service used Newark for its airmail into New York.
La Guardia wouldn't stand for that.
>> AREND: Make no mistake about it, this airport was not going
to be denied. Mayor La Guardia was going to
build this airport, and there was no question about it.
>> NARRATOR: La Guardia hired the architects who designed
Dinner Key in Florida. The art deco flavor of that
earlier airport would be repeated in New York's new
municipal airport, eight miles from the city.
The circular Marine Air Terminal was positioned on the shore to
handle the luxurious seaplane flights.
The planes would float over to the back of the terminal dock by
piers that provided walkways inside the rotunda.
The airport also provided international travel via
seaplane, as land-based passenger planes could not yet
carry passengers overseas. The seaplanes traveled east to
Europe with fueling stops at coastal ports in Canada,
Greenland and Iceland. New York City not only had a
world class airport; it had an international one.
>> AREND: La Guardia opened up the entire European landscape to
scheduled air flights, as well as the domestic landscape to
scheduled flights into New York. >> NARRATOR: The airport also
had a terminal for land-based domestic flights.
Significantly, travelers at the airport were divided for
greater efficiency. >> AREND: Departing passengers
were upstairs. Arrival passengers came
downstairs. There was a clear definition
between arrival and departing passengers.
And, of course, on the departure level were all the great
services. The beautiful restaurant--
The Open Terrace, they called it.
It was a lovely affair. >> NARRATOR: New York Municipal
Airport boasted two nearly mile- long runways handling 250
flights its first summer in 1939.
On opening day, a group of skywriters flew above the crowds
and memorably wrote, "Name it La Guardia."
It took the city council a couple of years to rename the
airport La Guardia, but it became a hot spot soon after it
opened. >> AREND: The observation decks
were busy day and night watching the airplanes come and go.
Barbershops were here in the '30s.
There were small coffee shops and intimate, cozy little areas
at the airport to sit and have a quick drink before a flight.
>> NARRATOR: What the Mayor and others who created La Guardia
Airport couldn't have anticipated was the rapid
expansion of passenger airplane travel over the next decade.
Air travel demand greatly increased, especially after
World War II, and La Guardia was clearly inadequate to handle the
volume of flights, both domestic and international.
New York needed another airport. World War II had stimulated the
development of larger, faster, more efficient aircraft that
could also travel further. Redesigned after the war, these
new multi-engine planes not only carried more passengers on
longer trips, they sounded the death knell of the elegant but
inefficient flying boats which carried only about a dozen
passengers. These new aircraft demanded more
from the airports that serviced them.
>> RON DAVIES: They sacrificed the ability to take off quickly
in a short space, but by having longer runways and getting up a
much higher speed to take off, they could carry heavier loads.
And the length of runways began to grow.
And by the end of the Second World War, you had to have at
least a mile of runway if you were going to hope to be
recognized as a class airfield. >> NARRATOR: Airports in Europe
also expanded to accommodate the new planes.
Amsterdam's 30-year-old Schiphol International Airport, for
instance, was destroyed during the war, but rebuilt and
reopened in 1946, ready for the larger planes.
In addition to refurbished airports, brand-new airports
like England's Heathrow, 15 miles from London, met the
international demand. Within its first year of
operation, airport planners speculated building nine runways
to handle all the traffic. They ultimately built three.
While Heathrow was being built overseas, in America, New York
International Airport opened in 1948 in Jamaica Bay, at the
southeast end of Long Island, 15 miles from the city.
Later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport, it was
enormous. >> AREND: Well, you could take
all of La Guardia Airport and fit it very neatly inside the
passenger terminal oval at Kennedy.
There's 600 acres here. There's 5,000 acres there.
So, there was the feeling that there was an endless amount of
room to grow. >> NARRATOR: But runway length
was not the only difference between La Guardia and JFK.
Instead of a single passenger terminal serving a host of
airlines, JFK pioneered the airport city concept, with each
airline building its own terminal.
It also had its own police department and its own
electrical power plants. >> AREND: The most interesting
thing about JFK International Airport was, here was the
ultimate expression of the airlines versus the railroads
and the steamships. Every one of the carriers went
out to that field and built their own statement.
The buildings were designed with a flair and a sense of
destination and a sense of excitement.
>> NARRATOR: The 150-foot control tower, completed in
1952, was one of the earliest freestanding control towers,
coordinating roughly 50 flights a day.
JFK was America's busiest international airport throughout
the 1950s. But the introduction of
passenger jet aircraft in 1958 meant bigger planes and more
flights. Airports would have to adjust to
the "jet age." "International Airports" will
return on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> Narrator: We now return to
"International Airports" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i>
The technology of flight advanced yet again in the
1950s, when passenger jets sent a shock wave through the
community of airport architects. Bigger, faster, heavier planes
required leaner, cleaner, more efficient "jet age" airports.
>> OLISLAGERS: Jet aircraft technology allowed the aircraft
to become larger and larger because of the thrust-to-weight
ratios. And as the aircraft got larger,
being able to get the aircraft into a gate without touching
wings with an airplane that might be sitting in the next
gate over became a real problem.
(<i> jet engines roar</i> ) >> NARRATOR: So did the noise.
Jets were louder than propellers.
Airports needed more room to land the bigger planes, and they
needed to be far enough from the city to avoid noise pollution.
Yet they had to be close enough to be convenient.
Larger, more efficient planes meant more cost-efficient
flights. As a result, air travel opened
up to even more consumers. >> DOUGLAS: The success of the
jet is not so much the speed that it offered, but that it
reduced costs so dramatically, and when the seat-mile costs go
down, then that enables a volume of traffic or it invites a new
community. >> NARRATOR: Commercial jet
service began at London's Heathrow in 1952, six years
before any other international airport, with flights to
Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1953, passengers through
Heathrow topped the million mark, the first airport to do
so. Three years later, Heathrow saw
three million. The first international
airport in America built specifically for the jet age
was Washington's Dulles, opened in 1962, and designed by
Eero Saarinen. Three runways at Dulles were
constructed of reinforced poured concrete, each over two miles
long. A modern air traffic control
tower was constructed to a height of 177 feet, 27 feet
higher than JFK's tower. Dulles also pioneered the use of
traveling lounges, or people movers, to ferry passengers more
efficiently to their gates. >> AREND: Instead of trying to
put a lot of people in a gate situation and jam them in, you
can move people onto these people movers that would take
them out to the aircraft waiting to board, to take off.
So it attempted several different technologies which
have become, in one way or another, commonplace at airports
all over the world. >> NARRATOR: situated more than
25 miles from Washington, D.C. on 10,000 acres, the airport
was planned for rural Virginia to reduce noise pollution and
provide the extra room required by jets.
However, communities soon sprouted up near Dulles, as they
often do around airports, to take advantage of opportunities
the dramatic new airport would inevitably generate.
Saarinen's startling design included a roofline that swept
dramatically up in a metaphor of flight.
>> OLISLAGERS: You want to have sort of that aerodynamic flow,
if you will. Lots of light, lots of open
space, sort of the embodiment, again, of, you know, blue skies
and "the sky's the limit." >> NARRATOR: The terminal at
Dulles International Airport was undeniably, unequivocally,
unabashedly an airport. As Dulles was making an
architectural impression in the east, another jet age airport in
the west was doing its best to keep a low profile.
Los Angeles International Airport, or L.A.X., began in the
teens as an airfield in the bean fields 18 miles west of downtown
L.A., but quickly grew after the war.
Expanding into an international airport in the late 1950s, it
took a radically different approach to architecture than
Dulles. >> WILLIAM M. SCHOENFELD: I've
often referred to this airport as an airport without any
exterior architecture. When you drive in, the buildings
on either side there are one and two stories, and you see a road
and you see glass fronts and you don't see any structures.
>> NARRATOR: With the strong Los Angeles car culture, the
architects anticipated lots of vehicles coming to the airport
and designed accordingly. Traffic is mitigated by L.A.X.'s
innovative, horseshoe-designed roadway that passes separate
terminals aligned in a row. >> SCHOENFELD: The reason for
this at Los Angeles is that we did not want to make the
passenger walk further than 40 feet from where he unloaded his
baggage at the curb to the face of the ticket counter.
>> NARRATOR: Within the horseshoe roadway were parking
lots, which could and would be expanded into multi-level
parking garages. The design was so effective at
controlling traffic that it took some observers by surprise.
>> SCHOENFELD: When we opened in 1961, the<i> L.A. Times</i> especially
came out and photographed the empty streets and talked about
the fact that we'd overspent the $20 million for the terminal.
In the ensuing 20 years, the population and travel went up,
airplanes got bigger, and more people were traveling, and in
1982, it was, uh... we built the second level.
>> NARRATOR: Los Angeles improved on the old La Guardia
concept of dividing arriving and departing travelers by
separating them before they even got out of their cars.
At L.A.X., departing travelers are sent to the upper level
roadway and arrivals to the lower roadway.
Observers were again surprised at the success of the scheme.
>> SCHOENFELD: So when we opened the new second level roadway,
they were out again with the mobile units, but the story was
that "Gee, we're sorry, folks, we're not going to be able to
come out here anymore and report on the traffic jams
because there aren't any." But that was almost 20 years
ago, now, and we're back to the point where traffic is
overloading the second level roadway.
>> NARRATOR: L.A.X. was one of the first airports to have
fueling hydrants built into the aprons of the tarmac to
facilitate underwing fueling, thus avoiding expensive
collisions between jet wings and fueling carts.
L.A.X. incorporated a cutting- edge baggage claim system, built
around the new carousel design. Luggage could now be loaded onto
a conveyor belt that whisked it to a retrieval area, often
arriving there before its owner did.
A state-of-the-art control tower 13 stories high sat on top of
the airport administration building, handling nearly 1,500
flights a day and carrying roughly 33,000 people on three
runways, each roughly two miles long.
The sheer size of the equipment was daunting.
>> SCHOENFELD: Originally, they had three levels of nothing but
electronics, and through the years, as electronics
improvements came along, they just reduced the size of the
equipment down to where they didn't need all that space.
>> NARRATOR: After constructing a clean, efficient, subtle
airport, the architects at L.A.X. then planted an
outlandish landmark smack in its center, whose main purpose was
to symbolize the futuristic jet- age theme of the airport.
The overtly architectural restaurant and observation deck,
with its spindly legs reminiscent of an alien
spacecraft, was named the Theme Building.
When L.A.X. opened, projections indicated that it would never
need more than 10,000 parking spaces.
They were off by at least a multiple of three.
Anticipating future needs is one of the most important and most
difficult tasks for airport officials.
>> OLISLAGERS: Looking at how the market may respond, not just
five years from now but 20 years from now, takes tremendous
amount of money and a lot of planning and environmental work
to build a new hangar. In fact, these days, just to add
capacity to an airport, it takes almost ten years just to build a
new runway. >> NARRATOR: The volume of air
traffic is increasing at such a rate that planners can barely
keep up. Over 635 million people traveled
by plane in 1999, up 22 million over the previous year.
The importance of airport support facilities is greater
than ever. Older airports must adapt or
fail. "International Airports" will
return on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> Narrator: We now return to
"International Airports" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i>
>> NARRATOR: At 53 square miles, Denver International
Airport, or DIA, is one of of largest airports in the
world. Completed in 1995, DIA is six
times the size of La Guardia and JFK airports combined.
It is more than twice the size of Manhattan Island.
In fact, the entire city of Boston could fit within the
confines of DIA. Approximately 23 miles from
downtown Denver, it handles over 104,000 passengers each day,
with over 1,371 flights taking off and landing on its five
nearly 2h-mile long runways. >> CURTIS WORTH FENTRESS: One
of the lines I heard that really defines that well is
"how much metal can you pack in the sky?"
>> NARRATOR: Constructing the massive airport took a roughly
10,000-person crew over five years.
Situated on the plains of Colorado's eastern prairie, the
task of leveling the land was an enormous job that encompassed
shifting over 110 million cubic yards of earth.
Runways were built on layers, and over 2.5 million cubic yards
of concrete were used to complete runways, taxiways and
aprons. Denver's flight control tower,
at 327 feet, the tallest in North America, was designed with
the latest Doppler radar innovations to evaluate weather
conditions in an environment that sees violent, tornado-
spawning thunderstorms and icy, wind-sheering blizzards.
DIA, like La Guardia, divides loading and unloading passengers
onto different floors to reduce congestion.
Evoking the traveling lounges at Dulles, a light rail system at
DIA takes passengers from their gates to the central terminal
for picking up luggage and accessing ground transportation
or parking lots. The central terminal is packed
with so many retail outlets that DIA resembles a giant shopping
mall. >> FENTRESS: It's a sort of a
mini-city in itself. There are 25,000 plus
employees at the Denver airport, for instance, and so,
there's a need for everything you can think of-- from nurse
stations, a doctor, a chapel, uh, meeting spaces.
>> NARRATOR: DIA's architects not only made the airport
gigantic, they went one step further and made it an icon: one
of the most instantly recognizable airports ever
built. >> FENTRESS: We were very
careful to try to incorporate something of this region, and
so, I searched long and hard for inspiration for something that
said Colorado, said the West, and the thing that for me that
kept being there was the mountains.
The mountains are very unique in this area of the country, and
so, the sort of ridge shapes or peaks and valleys that we
created with the roof there was inspired by the mountains, and I
think it kind of folds into the aspect of making buildings
unique and different for the place.
>> NARRATOR: With an outer shell made of waterproof,
Teflon-coated woven fiberglass, the roof membranes comprise over
15 acres of white peaks which reflect 90 percent of the
daylight. The remaining ten percent of
daylight sufficiently lights the interior of the terminal during
the day. Amazingly, the roof membranes
weigh less than two pounds per square foot and neither conduct
nor store heat. The airport cuts quite a profile
alone out on the plains. Incredibly, despite its size and
newness, DIA is already becoming inadequate.
Some people complain that there isn't enough parking, and
efforts have been made to increase the facilities.
Others complain that it's too far from the city, and efforts
are being made to design better access.
Still others say it won't be able to handle increased
traffic, up more than 20 percent since it opened its doors in
1995. Finally, some complain that
there is always construction taking place, and not just at
Denver, but practically everywhere.
Airports never seem quite finished.
>> FENTRESS: One of the things that we have to keep in mind
when we are designing an airport is that the life of the building
is going to be over a long period of time-- maybe 50 years,
maybe longer-- but over that 50- year period of time, we're going
to see a lot of changes, and so, to be able to create a building
that has lots of flexibility in the future is paramount in the
design of an airport. >> NARRATOR: In Europe,
expansion at 50 year-old Orly International Airport in Paris
did not prevent the need for a brand-new airport, which opened
in 1974 as Charles DeGaulle International Airport.
Anticipating jumbo jets in its design, DeGaulle nevertheless
expanded in 1983, 1989 and again in 1994.
Closed to commercial flights during World War II, London's
Gatwick reopened in the 1950s to steady growth and expansion
despite continuing as a single- runway airport.
Today Gatwick sees roughly 30 million passengers a year
through its terminals. Amsterdam's Schippol, which
saw renovations in the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s, also averages
30 million passengers a year. In America, JFK's airport
redevelopment, the largest ever, will cost over $9 billion
and includes a light rail system linked to the city's subway and
railroad. New and renovated terminals will
spruce up the aging facility. Dulles enlarged its main
terminal, opened new concourses and added gates to handle
traffic, which rose 26 percent between 1998 and 1999 alone.
Dulles is the fastest growing of the world's 50 largest airports.
L.A.X. plans to improve with freeway and railway extensions,
a people mover, a new terminal and more parking.
L.A.X., like all airports, is imperfect.
>> AREND: If you hang the name of the city on the airport and
the airport is a stinker, the city will take the rap.
It can be out in the country, sooner or later, the city will
show up around the airport, and you'll have to deal with it.
But from the get-go, the airport has to work.
It has to be up and ready to roll.
>> NARRATOR: With all this activity going on, coordinating
flights, travelers and cargo, managing noise, expansion and
adaptability, you'd be surprised just how much your international
airport is doing that you don't even know about.<i>
Modern Marvels</i> will return. >> Narrator: We now return to
"International Airports" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i>
Welcome to McCarren International Airport in Las
Vegas, Nevada. Don't forget to drop a quarter
in the slot machine on your way to your luggage.
When visiting London's Gatwick, be sure to grab some English tea
biscuits as you leave the gate. Every airport reflects the
character of its place, but beneath the surface,
international airports function in roughly the same way using
roughly the same language. They have to.
>> DOUGLAS: There's a kind of choreography, a ballet that has
to take place. And the speed at which that
takes place determines the number of passengers that you're
able to service. It's such an immensely
complicated task to make this system work, but it's not simply
making one system work, it's making hundreds of systems work
all over the country. The system at LAX has to work in
similar ways to the system at La Guardia or National or
Dulles. >> NARRATOR: Those
interconnected systems help guarantee that your travel will
be safe and pleasant. It begins with security.
Lots of security. Control rooms full of agents
monitor television feeds from cameras all over the airport.
From curbside check-in to terminal gate.
At entry-to-gate area security, multiple cameras capture
different angles as passengers unload their belongings for the
search and scan. This security gauntlet began in
the early '70s after a series of hijacking incidents prompted the
Federal Aviation Administration to require that all airports
search travelers and their bags. Here at LAX, after a woman
places her bags on the belt, a thief delays her from walking
through the metal detector. On the other side, a different
angle reveals his partner taking the woman's purse.
This maneuver is known as a diversionary theft.
Police were later able to retrieve the woman's purse by
examining the security tape and identifying the suspects.
High above the shops and restaurants, traffic control is
managed within view of the runways.
Controllers handle each of the planes that land every few
seconds, every hour of every day of every year.
Slips of paper represent every flight.
Computers facilitate the communication between plane and
tower, where the central controller gives the pilot his
flight pattern, another controller leads the plane out
of the gate and onto the taxiway, and a third guides the
plane into the air. >> DRISCOLL: They are absolutely
the most valuable element at the airport.
We operate 2,000 operations here.
That's a thousand airplanes landing and a thousand airplanes
taking off on a daily basis. The timing, the preciseness, the
scheduling of all that and their ability to manage that is really
quite amazing. >> NARRATOR: Down on the tarmac,
rescue operators rehearse for disaster.
Airports have to expect the unexpected.
Their efforts make airline travel one of the safest modes
of transportation. Millions of people travel
through customs every year at any given international airport.
While customs officials use X- ray equipment to look for
illegal imports such as plants and animals, they also use dogs
like this beagle to sniff out contraband.
The dog taps suspect baggage with its paws to signal
something suspicious. In this case, an orange from
Turkey. This checkpoint makes
agricultural inspectors happy, knowing that fruit or meat-borne
toxins will find it difficult to get through the gauntlet.
It makes the beagle happy, too. He gets a treat every time he
finds something. Dozens of airlines plan and
adjust their schedules while an army of mechanics check planes
and conduct periodic tune-ups. Retail outlets bring in as much
as $400 million in combined revenue at some airports-- so
much revenue that new airports today, like movie theaters, reap
much of their profits from concessions.
>> OLISLAGERS: Some airports are focusing more on becoming a
shopping mall than they are moving passengers in and out,
and that's become a very important revenue source also
for airports. >> NARRATOR: Increasingly,
airlines and airports are catering to non-human travelers.
>> AREND: The biggest development at the airport is
the air cargo business. We don't hear a lot about air
cargo, but air cargo is the growing star in the, uh, in the
transportation firmament. >> NARRATOR: Perfectly
successful airlines survive without ever boarding a paying
customer. Instead their planes are loaded
with high priority letters and packages.
Or maybe blue crab from Chesapeake Bay.
Or the latest fashions from the runways of Paris and Milan.
Even the bodies of the recently deceased travel in the bellies
of airplanes. Computerized tracking allows
cargo to clear through customs often before the plane touches
down in a new country. The newest airports have to work
within this overarching system even as they look for ways to
improve on the past. This puts quite a burden on the
architects who design airports such as the new Inchon Airport
in Seoul, South Korea. >> AREND: Right now, Korean
Airlines is the second largest air cargo carrier in the world,
and the development of Inchon will further move that number
along. Because the China market is
everybody's goal, and Inchon will become an
important trans-gateway to the entire Asia Pacific market.
>> NARRATOR: The airport is built on a man-made land bridge
between two islands in the Yellow Sea about 30 miles from
downtown Seoul. The islands create a natural
barrier to rough seas which might otherwise make the
location a forbidding site. The remote location also
mitigates the effects of noise pollution.
Fentress Bradburn Architects, who built Denver's airport, won
a design competition to build the 5.6 million square foot
central passenger terminal. They began with a model.
>> FENTRESS: In the design of buildings, we use models
extensively for creation of the vision to help us illustrate
and communicate to our clients and to the public at large what
it is we're trying to do. And they're particularly
interesting and helpful whenever we have something that is unique
in terms of its spatial quality or the form of the building.
>> NARRATOR: The $6.9 billion airport includes two 2.3-mile-
long runways, two passenger terminals and four remote
concourses that will handle 27 million passengers a year.
Inchon's control tower is 329-and-a-third feet high--
3h feet taller than Denver's. The new airport is within 3h
hours flying time of 40 major metropolitan areas in
the dynamic Pacific Rim. Undoubtedly the airport's
designers have left room for changes and adjustments, for
nobody really knows exactly where advancements in technology
and engineering are going to lead.
Amazingly, the next leap may be straight out of the atmosphere
and into space. >> OLISLAGERS: The Federal
Aviation Administration already has as part of its mission the
Space Program on the commercial side.
And so, you know, we're looking at spaceports, incorporating
that with runways and launch facilities.
Someday, we might be traveling to Mars and airports will then
become spaceports. >> NARRATOR: International
airports may someday become interplanetary ones.
It's hard to imagine. But who could have predicted an
airport like Inchon way back in 1939 when Mayor LaGuardia
opened his airport in Queens? >> AREND: I think it's important
for airport operators to maintain their sense of balance
in terms of where they came from.
I think that the old facilities, the classic terminals are
constant reminders of where we came from.
>> NARRATOR: As international airports build and rebuild
themselves, their architects must constantly reflect and
reinterpret those innovations which have made airports of the
past successful, adaptable and efficient.
No longer modified train stations, international airports
have evolved their own style, their own majesty.
They are the first exotic destination on our far-flung
journeys. <font color="#FFFF00">[Captioning sponsored by
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by<font color="#FF0000">
The Caption Center</font> WGBH Educational Foundation]
I have over 100gigs of modern marvels on disc somwhere. I REALLY hope those discs made the move from PA to NM with me. LOVE that show!