"Jet Age Takes Off"

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Jet Age Takes Off 
Workers upgrading a runway at LAX uncover a layer of airstrip that planners
say was linked to a turning point in aviation history
By Doug Irving 
The Torrance (CA) Daily Breeze


The concrete slab didn't look like much more than a nuisance when work crews
dug it up recently at Los Angeles International Airport.

But the white stripe painted down its middle marked it as a small but
forgotten piece of LAX history. There, lying in the earth where nobody
expected it, was a stretch of the runway that welcomed the first commercial
jetliner to Los Angeles.

The old runway came to light last month when workers peeled away the much
more modern runway that had hidden it for decades. In fact, the demolition
crews pulled up three different runways, placed on top of one another and
spanning the years like layers of old wallpaper.

But it was the middle one, the one that airport planners think was built in
1958, that recalls one of the most important turning points in aviation
history. It dates to the very moment when heavy propellers were giving way
to sleek jet engines -- and making the world that much smaller in the
process.

"It was a huge moment, the advent of the jet age," said Ethel Pattison, an
LAX historian who has worked at the airport since 1956. "It just changed the
world, really."

The old runway didn't appear on any of the plans that demolition crews
consulted before they began tearing up the southern-most runway at LAX this
summer. The work is part of a massive redesign of the airfield to make it
safer for airplanes on the ground.

The workers smashed through the existing runway and, to everyone's surprise,
found more concrete underneath. Soon, they had excavated a ribbon of old
runway 1,300 feet long and 100 feet wide, itself built atop the asphalt
remnants of an even older runway.

Airport officials dug through old plans, and this time found references to a
runway improvement project dated 1958. They now believe the runway they
unearthed was built that year and served as one of the airport's main
landing strips until it was covered over in the early 1980s.

That would place it among the wave of construction projects that transformed
a small airstrip with two terminals and a restaurant into the "jet-age
airport" known as LAX. Some of the airport's existing terminals and its
spacey Theme Building also date from that high-flying era when the idea of
jet travel was something new and exciting.

That date would also make the runway the right age to have played a role in
the first commercial jet flight from Los Angeles. On Jan. 25, 1959, a Boeing
707 accelerated down that runway and lifted off, sooty exhaust billowing
from its engines and crowds watching from the airport fence.

Everything changed, right there. Business travelers who had grown used to
sacrificing an entire day to the pounding misery of a cross-country
propeller flight found they could now reach New York by noon. Vacationers
were suddenly only a few hours away from the white sands of Hawaiian
beaches.

The 112 passengers on board that inaugural flight from LAX to New York found
booklets on their seats describing what they could expect. "The flight is
smooth beyond anything you have ever experienced," the booklets promised.
"Vibration, the major cause of travel fatigue, is gone."

Sam Stewart, the editor of the Daily Breeze, was on that flight and exalted
in the experience in two front-page columns.

"It was sort of like having a pass to ride with Noah on the Ark," he wrote,
"or with Columbus on the Nina, the Pinta or the Santa Maria. It was a
first."

Jet travel quickly became a boon to Los Angeles, a land of sun and surf that
was now only a few hours of flight from the icy winters of the East Coast.

The Jet Age Airport grew. Soon, tens of millions of travelers were passing
through its terminals every year. And that old, jet-age runway wore out and
was replaced, then forgotten.

Its discovery last month slowed down the demolition of the existing runway
above it. Managers are now working to make up about 23 days of delays to the
airfield project.

As an artifact, the piece of runway wasn't much, just a strip of concrete
with an old center line still visible. The workers broke it up and carted it
away. "We were just anxious to get rid of it," program manager Jake Adams
said.

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