Heathrow Airport Parking

Heathrow airport history

Heathrow started life in the 1930s as the Great Western Aerodrome. Privately owned by Fairey Aviation, it was used primarily for testing. The land was originally acquired from the vicar of Harmondsworth. The airport was named after the hamlet Heath Row, which was demolished to make way for the airport and was located approximately where Terminal 3 now stands. At first, it had no commercial traffic and Croydon Airport was the main airport for London.

In 1944 Heathrow came under the control of the Ministry of Air. Harold Balfour (later Lord Balfour), then Under-Secretary of State for Air (1938-1944), wrote in his 1973 autobiography Wings over Westminster, that he deliberately deceived the government committee that a requisition was necessary in order that Heathrow could be used as a base for long-range transport aircraft in support of the war with Japan. In fact, Balfour wrote, he always intended the site to be used for civil aviation and used a wartime emergency requisition order to avoid a lengthy and costly public inquiry. The Royal Air Force never made use of the airport and control was transferred to the Ministry of Civil Aviation on 1 January 1946 - the first civil flight that day being to Buenos Aires, via Lisbon for refuelling.

The airport opened fully for civilian use on 31 May 1946 and by 1947 Heathrow had three runways, with three more under construction. These older runways, built for piston-engined planes, were short, and criss-crossed to allow for all wind conditions. The first concrete slab of the first modern runway was ceremonially placed by Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. She also opened the first terminal building, the Europa Building (later Terminal 2), in 1955. Shortly afterwards the Oceanic Terminal (later Terminal 3) became operational. At this time the airport had a direct helicopter service from central London and gardens on the roof of the terminal building.

Terminal 1 was opened in 1968, completing the cluster of buildings at the centre of the Heathrow site. The location of the original terminals in the centre of the site has since become a constraint to expansion. This decision reflected an early assumption that airline passengers would not require extensive car parking, as air travel was then only affordable to the wealthy - who would, of course, be chauffeur-driven.

In 1977, the London Underground was extended to Heathrow - connecting the airport with Central London in just under an hour via the Piccadilly Line. The loop to Terminal 4 was inactive for some months in 2006 during the construction of an extension to Terminal 5.

Terminal 4 was built away from the three older terminals, to the south of the southern runway. It opened in 1986 and became the home for then newly-privatised British Airways. In 1987, the British Government privatised the British Airports Authority (now just "BAA plc"), which included seven of Britain's airports, including Heathrow.

This history article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article " London Heathrow Airport".