BUSY CROYDON.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 415, 23 April 1937, Page 3

BUSY CROYDON.

LONDON’S AIR PORT. Seen By Day and By Night. ’‘What a foul evening!” you claim as you settle yourself in a comfortable chair thankful to be indoors omt of the blustering wind and driving rain, writes C. D. Paimer in the Sphere. Yet perhaps at that wry moment a big air liner is Handing ready on the concrete apron at Croy- ’ don Airport waiting for a coach-load of passengers bound for Paris to arrive from London. The pilot has just had a v’eather report from the meteorological office telling him to expect dirty weather over the Channel with gusts up to 45 miles per hour over Northern France and rain along mott of the route, and as he stands waiting beside his machine the hejavy gusts push the pen of the wind gauge r higher and higher and bring down squalls of rain from the south-west. Presently the coach arrives, the passengers emplane, and soon the big machine taxies out into the path lit by the floodlight, and having received the flash of the all clear signal from the control tower the pilot opens the throttle®’ and with a roar the liner takef off into the darkness. Just about the time you are sitting down to your evening meal at home the passengers are being served 'v.ith dinner in the brightly-lit cabin high above the Channel. Many Passengers. A couple of hours later another machine homeward bound from Paris iE due at Croydon, and in spite of the weather she comes in to time dead on her course. After circling thd aerodrome and getting permission to lahd by H'gliv signal Tfoftt* the "control td'wßr she-floats’to earth dbwn the beain of the floodlight and tiaxies. Up fo the arrival gangway.’ The*passengers* pass quickly through the Customs hall, their passports are scrutinised by the immigration officials, their luggage is examined, »and if all is ’ correct they are on their way to London in the motor-coach in a very few minutes. This State-owned airport is in fact the air equivalent of some seaports dealing with ocean-going liners; actually, it handles more passengers than most seaports, and their numbers are only exceeded by the Channel ports.. More passengers pass through Croydon than through the Port of London. The chief aerodrome officer. corresponds to the harbourmaster; and, in addition to managing the internal economy of. the airport controls the coming and going of air liners and smaller craft. The nerve centre of the vhole airport is the control tower, whence the movements of all aircraft entering or leaving the port are regulated by wireless telegraphy, wireless telephony, or light signal. The control officer is in touch with every *air liner outward and homeward bound on the Continental airway, and on a large map small flags bearing the registration letters of each machine are

moved in accordance with its reported position. On another big map *are plotted the bearings l and positions given to aeroplanes by wireless. Wireless bearings of machines are taken by th© direction-finding stations st Croydon, Lympne, and Pulham. These are reported back to the control tower, where the petition of the machine is plotted and reported back to its pilot. Within a minute and a-half of his request for position the pilot can be told where he is. A Controlled Zone. b When visibility is bad, officially defined as lese than 100 yards horizontally and 1000 feet vertically, a controlled zone, south of the Thames, roughly speaking bounded by a line joining Kingston, Redhill, and Penshurst, and running thence due back to the Thames, is 'established. Two control officers are on duty in the control tower instead of one. All aircraft are warned by wireless or ground signal that the control is in force, and a special Ehort-wave wireless system is brought into use to avoid interference with messages to incoming machines’. No machine may then «€,ntef the controlled zone unless ordered to do so by the Croydon control.

Machines without wireless must land outside the zone and ask permisEion by telephone from Croydon to enter it. Machines with wireless are kept outside the zone, if necessary at different heights and positions, and are given a turn for landing. All aeroplanes are brought into the zone in strict rotation and when thos© in front of a particular aeroplane have landed the control officer instructs it to enter the zone. This control system has been brought into force because of the great increase of traffic on the routes, and so that in thick weather incoming and outgoing machines may land and take off from Croydon without fear of collision. As befits the airport of London,

main terminal of the Continental air services and the Empire air routet, Croydon is the best equipped airport in the Empire. To provide for the night services which now operate regularly to and from the Continent the Air Ministry has recently installed a most up-to-date lighting system, and in this respect Croydon is believed to' have the best equipment p the Vorld. Like a seaport, Croydon has its harbour dues and dock charges, which help to pay for the running of the airport. Every machine which lands has to pay a landing fee depending on its maximum permissible weight as authorised on its certificate of airworthiness. A machine with a maximum permissible weight of 12001 b pays 2/6 for each landing, or £2/10/per month. For the tatter payment it may land 40 dimes, paying for extra landings pro rata. The scale rises until we find that a machine with maximum permissible weight of 30.0001 b has to pay £2/5/- per landing.