Viewing page 32 of 128

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

4/26/67                  WHEATLAND PAPER         DRAFT
 
       During the fifteen years that New York Airways has provided helicopter transportation between the major airports and in the New York metropolitan area, it has clearly demonstrated the value of vertical lift aircraft when matched against the increasingly slower and congested surface traffic.
       Even while acquiring this practical operating experience, however,
it was obvious that the ultimate solution to the problem of fast urban air
service to the public lay in [[strike through]] transporting them [[strike through]]having transportation to and from a midtown location.
Unfortunately, through those years, no such facility existed. However, when
the construction of the Pan Am Building was announced in September, 1960,
Robert L. Cummings, President of New York Airways, immediately recognized
the potentials of such an elevated platform in midtown Manhattan. Writing to Juan T. Trippe, Chairman of the Board of Pan American World Airways,
Cummings outlined the advantages of a helicopter operation from the 808-foot-high roof. Trippe, equally aware of the problems present by traffic-choked streets, promptly translated his interest into action. Engineering plans were developed to incorporate the structural requirements of the projected heliport. Extra stressing of the roof required 300 tons of steel as well as reinforced concrete slabs capable of bearing an impact load of 30,000 pound per square foot. Specially designed FAA fire-fighting and [[strike-through]]airport [[strikethrough]] heliport equipment, including lights, were installed. As the building reached completion, all facilities required by a heliport had been incorporated.
        Exhaustive wind tunnel studies were carried out and tests of aircraft performance, noise and wind conditions were made by the United States Naval Air Engineering Research Facility at Philadelphia, the Forrestal Laboratories