Heathrow celebrates 75 years of flying

In 1930, British aero engineer and aircraft builder Richard Fairey paid the Vicar of Harmondsworth £15,000 for a 150-acre plot to build a private airport to assemble and test aircraft.

With just a single grass runway and some hastily erected buildings, Fairey’s Great West Aerodrome was the precursor to the world’s busiest international airport, Heathrow.

In the Second World War, the Government requisitioned land in and around the village of Heath Row, including Fairey’s Great West

Aerodrome, to build RAF Heston, a base for troop-carrying aircraft bound for the Far East. A control tower and runways were constructed.

When the war ended it was handed to the Air Ministry as London’s new civil airport in 1946. The first aircraft to take off from Heathrow was a converted Lancaster bomber called Starlight that flew to Buenos Aires.

Back then terminals were ex-military marquees equipped with floralpatterned armchairs and small tables with vases of flowers. To reach the aircraft, passengers walked over wooden duckboards to protect their shoes from the muddy airfield.

By the close of Heathrow’s first operational year, 63,000 passengers had travelled through it, rising to 796,000 in 1951. British architect Frederick Gibberd designed permanent buildings with a central area accessed via a ‘vehicular subway’ running underneath the original main runway.

By 1961 the old terminal on the north side had closed and airlines operated from the Europa terminal (later Terminal 2) or the Oceanic terminal (now 3).

Terminal 1 opened in 1969 as the jet age arrived with Boeing 707s, VC10s and Tridents. The 1970s brought Concorde and Boeing 747s.

Terminal 4 opened in 1986, Terminal 5 in 2008 and the Queen’s Terminal in 2014. Today Heathrow is the world’s busiest international airport. In normal times, more than 67 million passengers a year use 90 airlines travelling to more than 180 destinations in over 90 countries.

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