Historical film of Heathrow produced in 1949. It looks at the rural area displaced in order to permit 'London's airport' and has plenty of shots of the aircraft of the day. It's a Crown Film Unit production so the quality is good.

The narrator tells us that runway number 1 is the finest in the world - two others were nearing completion when the film was made. Number 1's concrete surface looks a little bumpy to me but perhaps it's an illusion.

The latest year saw 400,000 passengers handled with many more expected in the future.
 
A five-minute series of shots at Heathrow in 1958 - 'London Airport' as it was usually known then.

The sequences appear to be discarded rough cuts from a Pathe News item about the airport, apparently concentrating on youngsters spotting. There is no sound.

The colour film shows a host of airlines from that period, and most seem to be turbo-props, although I think I spotted a piston-engined Douglas DC 3 in the background at one point. There might have been other piston-engined aircraft that I missed. This was the early days of the Boeing 707 but I saw no jets in any of the shots.

In those days airports were far more inclined to cater for spotters or simply those fascinated to observe airliners at close quarters - it has to be remembered that the majority of people had never flown then and to watch aircraft departing and arriving to and from 'foreign parts' was something of an adventure to many.

One sequence shows signposts to the Queen's Building where a commentary on the airside activity used to be provided, and to the Airport Tours Booking Office.

The first minute of the video is taken up with shots of youngsters in a rooftop playground at the airport. The main aircraft action begins after that.

 

Upload Media

Remove Advertisements

Subscribe to help support your favourite forum and in return we'll remove all our advertisements. Your contribution will help to pay for things like site maintenance, domain name renewals and annual server charges.



Forums4aiports
Subscribe

NEW - Profile Posts

survived a redundancy scenario where I work for the 3rd time. Now it looks likely I will get to cover work for 2 other teams.. Pretty please for a payrise? That would be a no and so stay on the min wage.
Live in Market Bosworth and take each day as it comes......
Well it looks like I'm off to Australia and New Zealand next year! Booked with BA from Manchester via Heathrow with a stop in Singapore and returning with Air New Zealand and BA via LAX to Heathrow. Will circumnavigate the globe and be my first trans-Pacific flight. First long haul flight with BA as well and of course Air NZ.
15 years at the same company was reached the weekend before last. Not sure how they will mark the occasion apart from the compulsory payirse to minimum wage (1st rise for 2 years; i was 15% above it back then!)
Ashley.S. wrote on Sotonsean's profile.
Welcome to the forum, I was born and bred in Southampton.
Seems ĺike been under construction for donkeys years!

Trending Hashtags

Advertisement

Back
Top Bottom
  AdBlock Detected
Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks some useful and important features of our website. For the best possible site experience please take a moment to disable your AdBlocker.