Aircraft Design as Related to Airport Standards

The point in aviation has been reached at which a much closer correlation must be sought between the design of aircraft and the design of airports, and also between these two factors and the efforts to achieve all-weather operation. Aviation history will reveal that the airplane was designed first and then the airports were constructed to satisfy the needs of the airplanes as built. As the goal of all-weather operating conditions is approached, electronic equipment that will overcome the deficiencies in both airplane and airport design is an urgent need. Unless a most intimate relationship between the design and construction of our airports, airplanes, and electronic equipments can be established, the cost of providing adequate airports, airplanes, and service can become economically prohibitive.

Somewhere along the line there is an area of diminishing returns, in which the cost of reducing cancellations and interruptions to scheduled operations makes the undertaking no longer profitable. The answer is to be found in the design of aircraft and airports and in the selection and installation of airborne and ground equipments to accomplish all-weather flight. Failure in any one of these fields of development can easily dictate failure of the all-weather objective.

Unless aircraft are designed to fit airports and to overcome certain flight and weather phenomena, and unless airport and equipment costs are kept down and maximum use made of all equipment that can be economically supplied, the over-all cost of providing all-weather operation is greater than the value of the benefits to be derived from such operation.