Closing of Military Road and Approval of Washington National Airport
The rapid expansion in aircraft size and weight as well as the need for enhanced airfield safety led the U.S. Department of Commerce to threaten to close Washington-Hoover again. In June 1937, the department promulgated new rules requiring runways to be lengthened by as much as 2,000 feet (610 m) and for all obstructions for take-off and landing flight paths to be removed. The department also instituted an airport classification system designed to rate fields on safety and other factors. Aircraft would be permitted to use only at those fields which had a rating indicating it was safe for them, and air traffic volumes would be limited at fields with lower ratings. The rules threatened to close Washington-Hoover, or permit its use for local traffic only.
In early September, the War Department agreed to allow planes to land at Bolling Field in an emergency. This led the Air Line Pilots Association to cancel its boycott of Washington-Hoover. But shortly thereafter, the association renewed its push to have the airport closed altogether. Under intense pressure, the National Aviation Corporation said it was putting Washington-Hoover Airport up for sale. Airport officials later said they hoped that the federal government would take over Washington-Hoover, greatly expand it, and operate it as a joint public-private enterprise with National Aviation. Two months later, Washington-Hoover officials announced that the blimp hangar at the field was being closed and removed. The airfield also proposed filling in part of the lagoon that formed the southern end of Boundary Channel, so that a much-needed, much longer cross-runway could be built at the field.
One important improvement at Washington-Hoover Airport went almost unnoticed, but proved historic. J. Willard Marriott, noticing the many passengers at Washington-Hoover Airport without access to food, opened the world's first airline catering business there in 1937.
Read more about this topic: Washington-Hoover Airport
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“Our two eyes do not make our lot better; one serves us to see the good things, the other the evils of life. A lot of people have the bad habit of closing the first, and very few close the second.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“With only one life to live we can’t afford to live it only for itself. Somehow we must each for himself, find the way in which we can make our individual lives fit into the pattern of all the lives which surround it. We must establish our own relationships to the whole. And each must do it in his own way, using his own talents, relying on his own integrity and strength, climbing his own road to his own summit.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.”
—Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65–8 B.C.)
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“We are constantly thinking of the great war ... which saved the Union ... but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before—a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Airplanes are invariably scheduled to depart at such times as 7:54, 9:21 or 11:37. This extreme specificity has the effect on the novice of instilling in him the twin beliefs that he will be arriving at 10:08, 1:43 or 4:22, and that he should get to the airport on time. These beliefs are not only erroneous but actually unhealthy.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)