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100      Air Regulations, 1938

DESIRABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF AIRPORTS

1. Location.-An airport to serve a given urban area should be within the shortest possible distance from the centre of the area to be served having regard to zoning requirements and the means of communication with that centre and should be the best the circumstances permit. The advantage of a rapid journey by air is minimized if time is wasted going to or from the airport. Urban centres situated near navigable water should, where possible, be served by a combined airport, thus reducing the expense of both equipment and maintenance. 

2. Exposure.-An airport should not be so located that it is exposed to abnormal, irregular, or violent winds or squalls or to seas or heavy swell.

3. Size of Airports (Land).-At a public airport the circular area available for the taking off and alighting of flying machines should not be less than 1,800 feet in diameter at sea level and a length of at least 3,000 feet should be provided if possible with provision for extension to 5,000 feet in the case of large municipal airports. There should be no obstacles in the vicinity which require to be marked as dangerous, and ordinarily no licence will be grated for any public airport which has in its vicinity more than two of such obstacles. Fences, trees, telephone or transmission poles and lines, towers or tall chimneys, high buildings, etc., are obstructions and hazards to safe flying operations. Their effect is to reduce by twenty feet the effective landing area for every foot of height of the obstruction, the ratio 20 to 1 is calculated at sea level: for example, a telephone line with poles and wires 50 feet high discounts the usefulness of the effective landing area by 1,000 feet. The principal runways prepared for night flying must have a flight-way approach with a width of 1,000 feet clear of obstacles in a ratio of 50 to 1 from the perimeter of the airport. 

4. Size of Airports (Water).-There should be at least a two-mile square of water suitable for alighting and taking off, and not flanked on any side by high buildings, trees or cliffs. The depth of water throughout should be not less than six feet. 

5. Condition of Surface of Airports (Land).-The ground surface should be smooth both within the circular