AVIATION: Umbrella for Airplanes

At New York’s Idlewild International Airport last week, Pan American World Airways opened the world’s most striking terminal—a $12 million glass-and-steel circular structure that is topped off by an immense, umbrellalike, cantilevered roof. With a 114-ft. overhang, the roof can shelter all but the tail sections of six jetliners at one time. Pan Am’s is the fourth individual terminal to be opened at Idlewild. American, United and Eastern are already in operation. By 1962 the North-west-Braniff-Northeast building will be up. So will Eero Saarinen’s spectacular gull-like TWA terminal. Altogether, U.S. and foreign airlines—which once scorned Idlewild as too far from Manhattan—are now putting $150 million into the Terminal City building program, giving Idlewild a World’s Fair look.

Like the rest of Idlewild’s buildings, Pan American’s is designed to speed and pamper the often delayed and neglected air passenger. Instead of wrestling with swinging doors, the passenger enters the building through an 89-ft.-wide opening, which has an air curtain to keep out the weather. He puts his luggage on a conveyor, which speeds it on and off the scales, scoots it to the baggage area. Six 12-ft. electronic boards flash the latest flight information.

As a passenger waits for his flight in one of the six lounges, lights warn him of his departure: they fade over where he is sitting, and brighten at the loading zone he is supposed to take. (If he is dozing and does not get the hint, the old-fashioned public address system still pours in over him.) Jetliners nose in to the terminal like animals to a trough. To enplane, passengers simply walk along a short, level ramp into the aircraft’s nose door. The umbrella roof keeps the weather away.