Flying Downtown

A preview of how the U.S. city's air transportation facilities will be organized in the future was given last week with the announcement that New York City is planning two new, stamp-size, in-city landing facilities. Already Manhattan provides a direct helicopter service from atop the Pan Am building that hurdles the traffic on the way to the major airports; and it boasts a scattering of private copter pads, including one for the two-state Port Authority. Mayor John Lindsay uses the fire department's East River pier or the lawn of his official residence at Gracie Mansion. Even the meadows of Central Park have been pressed into service for emergency police-helicopter landings and Lyndon Johnson.

Soon the convenience of such close-in facilities will be available to a far wider public. Preliminary approval has been given to Pan Am's proposal to build a new heliport at 61st Street on the East River, which will service both private and commercial copters. Pan Am and New York City are also planning to build a 2,400-ft.-long runway out over the Hudson River between 59th and 68th Streets to handle S.T.O.L. (short takeoff and landing) planes that can carry up to 60 passengers, fly off airstrips as short as 1,000 ft.

Immediately, New York's proposed new heliport and stolport will be used to improve connections between Manhattan and its small outlying satellite fields in Teterboro, N.J., Farmingdale, L.I., and Westchester County. The objective is to encourage private planes to use the satellite fields instead of the presently more convenient but overworked commercial jetports--Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark--to which small planes contribute 40% of the combined traffic during rush hours, and at La Guardia alone 60%.

More important in the long run will be the use of the in-city landing facilities for direct transportation to similar facilities in other cities, including the prospect of direct hops between Manhattan and the Washington, D.C. Mall or Boston's new Government Center. An ideal future workhorse for such short flights is now being developed: Lockheed's CL 1026, a commercial version of the U.S. Army's rigid-rotor Cheyenne. A compound craft with a speed of 230 m.p.h. and range of 250 miles, the CL 1026 combines helicopter rotors for vertical landings and take-offs with fixed stub wings and propeller for level flight.

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