History of Heathrow airport

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Information and History of Heathrow Airport
As with many of to days airports Heathrow was nothing more than the local flying school with a tent and a grass field. Originally Heathrow was a small village, on which Terminal 3 now stands. The Second World in common with all UK airports saw the first real concerted development by the Air Ministry for use by the RAF and once the War was finished Heathrow was the obvious choice for an airport to serve London being only 15 miles from the capital

In 1955 the Queen opened a new terminal building which is now terminal 2 together with the main passenger access which still operates today. Terminal 3 was opened shortly after with terminal 3 in 1968 and terminal 4 in 1986. Despite massive investment in terminals over a relatively short time Heathrow has always being struggling to keep pace with demand and it was decided to build a terminal 5 in the mid nineties with an anticipated completion date of 2008..

This is currently one of the biggest construction projects undertaken in this country and is to include a new spur road off the M25. The original entrance to the airport was built way back in 1955 and it has been evident for some time that passenger and freight numbers were swamping the airport with bottlenecks an every day occurrence. The new spur road will half the traffic flow through the main entrance with all BA’s customers now being served out of terminal 5.

Whilst in the short term this will make a huge improvement to making the airport more efficient, history clearly shows that demand for airport services will continue to grow and a point will come in the not too distant future when Heathrow will simply not have the land capacity. Every time a new terminal is built even more land is needed for car parking.

No less than 63 million passengers traveled through Heathrow in 2003 to over 183 destinations with 1250 flights on average per day. To manage this output some 60,000 employees work directly for Heathrow airport. Whilst Heathrow claims to be the worlds busiest airport in terms of passenger numbers it is currently number 3. Atlanta airport at 79 million has overtaken Chicago airport with 69 million, which is someway ahead of Heathrow at 63 million.

Percentage increases up to 2003 suggests that Tokyo will soon overhaul Heathrow. Atlanta and Chicago airports total passengers ,however, are made up with a high percentage of internal flights and Heathrow still leads the way in International flights with its freight traffic currently second in tonnage terms.

Airport 2003 figures Million % growth
1 ATLANTA (ATL) 79 086 792 2.9
2 CHICAGO (ORD) 69 508 672 4.4
3 LONDON (LHR) 63 487 136 0.2
4 TOKYO (HND) 62 876 269 2.9
5 LOS ANGELES (LAX) 54 982 838 ( 2.2)
6 DALLAS/FT WORTH AIRPORT (DFW) 53 253 607 0.8
7 FRANKFURT/MAIN (FRA) 48 351 664 ( 0.2)
8 PARIS (CDG) 48 220 436 ( 0.3)
9 AMSTERDAM (AMS) 39 960 400 ( 1.9)
10 DENVER (DEN) 37 505 138 5.2
11 PHOENIX (PHX) 37 412 165 5.2
12 LAS VEGAS (LAS) 36 285 932 3.6
13 MADRID (MAD) 35 854 293 5.7
14 HOUSTON (IAH) 34 154 574 0.7
15 MINNEAPOLIS/ST PAUL (MSP) 33 201 860 1.8
16 DETROIT (DTW) 32 664 620 0.6
17 NEW YORK (JFK) 31 732 371 6.0
18 BANGKOK (BKK) 30 175 379 ( 6.2)
19 LONDON (LGW) 30 007 021 1.3
20 MIAMI (MIA) 29 595 618 ( 1.5)
21 NEWARK (EWR) 29 431 061 0.7
22 SAN FRANCISCO (SFO) 29 313 271 ( 6.8)
23 ORLANDO (MCO) 27 319 223 2.5
24 HONG KONG (HKG) 27 092 290 ( 20.0)
25 SEATTLE (SEA) 26 755 888 0.2
26 TOKYO (NRT) 26 537 406 ( 8.1)
27 ROME (FCO) 26 284 478 3.7
28 SYDNEY (SYD) 25 333 508 4.0
29 TORONTO (YYZ) 24 739 312 ( 4.6)
30 PHILADELPHIA (PHL) 24 671 075 ( 0.5)