london has more airports than any other
city in the world
six why most big cities have one huge
airport
how did london end up with so many
little ones and why they in such
inconvenient places
the answer is a fiddly and complicated
one
come with me now through the mists of
time back in time to a time
10 minutes before britain's aviation
story started
when our story starts
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in 1903 the wright brothers invented the
aeroplane
five years later an engineer with an
enormous moustache called claude graham
white
set up britain's first aerodrome in
hendon in north london
all you needed for an aerodrome was a
large field with enough room for taking
off and landing
somewhere to store the planes when you
weren't flying them and a clubhouse that
wouldn't let you in unless you had a
bushy enough moustache
so far flying was just a leisure pursuit
for the fabulously wealthy who already
had their own planes
i say chats last one to arrive in
manchester has to telephone the queen to
blow raspberry
but little did claude graham white know
that his expensive hobby things were
soon to become of major military
importance in the first world war
aeroplanes were used for taking photos
of and then dropping bombs on the enemy
the newly formed royal flying corps took
over hendon and started building new
aerodromes all over the southeast
britain was in a grip of plain mania or
pleinier if you will
shut up it was clear after the war that
planes were going to play a huge role in
the country's future
but predicting and sensibly preparing
for this future was harder than you
might think
some experts thought the plane would go
the same way as the car smaller and more
affordable and that everyone would be
flying their own private planes around
just like biggles
these serious plans from the 1920s and
30s showed just how wrong it was
possible to be
this is my favorite one in 1931 there
was a genuine plan to build an aerodrome
right here in the middle of london on
the rooftop of king's cross station
it would have had six runways facing in
all directions with planes taxiing
around the outside like an enormous
bicycle wheel
the idea was people could commute to
central london by plane
it seems ludicrous now but 30 years
prior to that the idea of flying a tour
was pretty insane
so this wasn't much of a stretch what
actually happened was planes were
getting bigger
and could travel much longer distances
civil aviation was about to
take off in 1920
modern aerodrome transformed itself into
croydon airport
london's first terminal for passengers
suddenly you didn't need your own plane
to fly
all you needed was loads of money
croydon airport had a terminal building
a solid tarmac runway a control tower
and a hotel it was the jewel of south
london
the gateway to the empire claude gray
and white got jealous and wanted to cash
in
and he transformed hendon into a proper
airport too
then all the other aerodromes joined in
the fun such as heston
northolt and bigen hill london had an
exciting new industry
but things were about to speed up and
get serious all over again
for world war round two
the royal flying corps which by now had
the much catchy name royal air force
needed to build even more air bases to
defend britain from the nazis
once again it was war that sped up
progress and changed the map of britain
forever
thanks to the war even more people would
now be able to fly as planes were bigger
faster and cheaper they'd stopped
sounding like this
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and started sounding like this
and that was a problem croydon's runways
were too short
and too close to people's houses for the
new noisy planes
so croydon airport was forced to close
in 1959
it was the same problem for all of
london's airports heston closed in 1947
northalt in 1954 in 1990
really 1994 and good old hendon in 1957.
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so what's happened to all those airports
that disappeared
northolt and bigan hill have been
demoted back to mere raf bases
you always know your nearby north when
the street lamps are ducking out of the
way of planes
croydon airport has now become a park
housing and industrial estate
and in case anyone forgets this plane
has been kept here ever since
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heston has been turned into heston
service station on the m4
and a golf course called air links and
there's one tiny hanger still there
and finally claude gray and white's
hendon has turned into a really dodgy
housing estate
appropriately named graham park the
street names here acknowledge the area's
aviation heritage
such as aviation drive and heritage
avenue
most appropriately of all graham park
includes the raf museum
who wouldn't let us in for filming
the new generation of airports would
have to be much bigger and much further
away from built-up areas
so in 1945 the government converted an
air base to the west of london
that they thought was far away enough we
know it today
as the airport that rules the roost you
know the one i mean
it's this one the one we all know this
is what it is i'm going to say it now
here it comes
yes it's the one you think it is you've
guessed it the jewel of west london
here it comes this is what it is it's
this
everyone's favorite airport you know the
one it's what you've all been waiting
for
here it comes now a small west london
hamlet called heathrow
two words was the site of the great west
aerodrome which was turned into the new
london airport
later heathrow airport in those days the
terminals were very basic
especially this one but it stood the
test of time
and today heathrow is still london's
number one airport
in a rare act of extreme forward
planning the government knew they would
need a backup airport to support
heathrow
so in 1958 raf gatwick became gatwick
airport a smaller version of heathrow
with just one runway
it was london's number two airport a
title it still holds to this day
unfortunately the government didn't plan
forward quite far enough
the 1960s brought about a huge change
that they couldn't possibly have seen
coming
the 1960s package holiday boom was the
first time flying became really popular
brits of all classes were jetting off to
all sorts of exciting destinations
mostly in spain women with unconvincing
fixed smiles used to catch beach balls
while old men adjusted their glasses
soon heathrow and gatwick couldn't cope
on their own the race was now on to
build london's
third airport but where to put it
by now planes had become so noisy that
choosing the location for a new airport
had become extremely complicated and
controversial
not just any place possessed the
appropriate properties to be propelled
into a proper popular passenger port for
people
london's third airport would need to
meet strict criteria
it needed to have room for expansion it
needed to have good transport links
it needed to be near to where people
live
but not too neat
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the man commissioned to find this
impossibly perfect place was the
hilariously named justice baron eustace
wentworth roskill
and he didn't have a clue what he was
doing as if asking for trouble roskill
suggested sites with such fairy tale
names as thorley cobblington and nut
hamster for the third airport
naturally the no-nonsense no-noise nimby
naysaying neighbours said no
so rosco then considered putting it here
on the thames ow on the thames estuary
the government said that's a stupid idea
building an expensive airport in the
middle of the thames estuary in the
middle of a recession
ludicrous but roscoe would not be
deterred
i will not be deterred in 1977 he
noticed that the solution was right
under his nose all along
the southeast was still littered with
raf bases from both wars
why not simply do the same as they'd
always done and convert another airbase
into london's third airport
why didn't he just come up with that
simple idea in the first place
the airbase he chose to convert was raf
stansted
in essex london finally got its third
airport but its title
london's third airport is misleading
when stansted was chosen raf luton had
already been turned into a proper
airport back in 1938
but it didn't count as london's third
airport because it was meant to serve
the home counties of beds hearts and
bucks and not london
confusingly stansted was further away
from london than luton was
and even more confusingly luton changed
its name in 1990 to london luton airport
one year before stansted finally got its
very long overdue grand opening in 1991
which technically means that london's
fourth airport came first and london's
third airport came second
luton's sneaky rebranding trick has been
tried by lots of other airports
including london oxford which is 61
miles away from london
nice try there's a london mansion london
cambridge
the worst offender has to be london
ashford which is closer to france than
london and some 20 miles from ashford
the only other airport apart from luton
that's managed this rebranding trick
successfully
is south end in 2012. with a bit of spit
and polish and a new train station
london's south end airport has found its
way onto the official list which brings
our total
to five the sixth and final one on the
list london city airport
is the odd one out because instead of
being built on a former raf base like
all the others
it was built from scratch in 1987 at the
same time as canary wharf on an old dock
that by happy coincidence was runway
shaped already
to this day it's only used by wankers so
that in a nutshell brings us to the
present day with all six of london's
airports
but what's happened to them since how
are they used today
and what's gonna happen to them in the
future subscribe for part two
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you