WI: Airport Built On Governor's Island

kernals12

Banned
Off the southern tip of Manhattan sits a plot of land known as Governor's Island
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It's a pretty useless island, formerly home to a coast guard base, but in the 20s, there was a proposal to make useful this piece of real estate
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Why not an airport?

The journey time from Wall Street would be far shorter than it is for LaGuardia or JFK, although the amount of traffic would probably require some form of land connection to Manhattan island (and obviously a subway connection), and the runways would need to be carefully placed so as not to force a building height limit on New York City.

Sadly, it was all for nought. The Military wanted the island for an army base and they got their wish when Congress approved it in 1927.

So what if things went differently?
 
It's not that simple. The prevailing winds in NYC are generally from the West. Lining the runway up with the East River forces most takeoffs and landings to be crosswind.

Also you'd need to nearly double the island in length. Midway Airport has the shortest viable runways you'll find for commercial use and that's about 6,500 ft. Governor's Island is charitably 4,000 ft at the longest. Even if you constructed an airport in the 20's it wouldn't be viable through the 60's - again unless you physically lengthen the island. Lengthening is a real possibility, but outside my wheelhouse. I'll leave it to those who know more.
 

kernals12

Banned
Also you'd need to nearly double the island in length. Midway Airport has the shortest viable runways you'll find for commercial use and that's about 6,500 ft. Governor's Island is charitably 4,000 ft at the longest. Even if you constructed an airport in the 20's it wouldn't be viable through the 60's - again unless you physically lengthen the island. Lengthening is a real possibility, but outside my wheelhouse. I'll leave it to those who know more.
Both of New York's airports have runways on reclaimed land. This isn't a problem.
 
Even if an airport was built in the 1920s, it would probably be replaced by the bigger airports at Queens, Newark, and Idlewild in the 1960s when passenger jets show up, unless commercial service ends in WWII and never comes back like at Floyd Bennett field in Brooklyn. I think continued military usage would be more likely than Bennett field based on the fact that it's an island and has been fortified for centuries. At this point, it would probably be a big Coast Guard station with significant NCR and NYPD activities.
 

Ramontxo

Donor
Also you'd need to nearly double the island in length. Midway Airport has the shortest viable runways you'll find for commercial use and that's about 6,500 ft. Governor's Island is charitably 4,000 ft at the longest. Even if you constructed an airport in the 20's it wouldn't be viable through the 60's - again unless you physically lengthen the island. Lengthening is a real possibility, but outside my wheelhouse. I'll leave it to those who know more.
London City airport runways are 1508m or 4948 feets long (according to wiki). It wouldn't take that much of a effort to lengthen it to that size

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...Vaw0EMfW9WvUmnRwDAvEljM_Y&cshid=1571734947026
 
London City airport runways are 1508m or 4948 feets long (according to wiki). It wouldn't take that much of a effort to lengthen it to that size

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...Vaw0EMfW9WvUmnRwDAvEljM_Y&cshid=1571734947026

According to Wikipedia, there are a bunch of restrictions on size and specialty landing techniques required to land at the London City Airport. I'm not sure it would be viable in the American commercial space. Really what I'm going for is: what is driving the effort to build Governor's Island into an airport in the first place? Sure you could build an airstrip in the 20's and just leave it to become obsolete in the 60's. Or you could double the length of the island and functionally quadruple the island's area until you hit a square mile - again about the area of Midway or LaGuardia. But these both seem like wasted efforts compared to the airports actually built. Consider all the problems LaGuardia has with being undersized, these problems would be at least as bad with the Governor's Island airport. I'm not sure this is the best use of resources.

That said, making a military airstrip on the island doesn't require nearly the same runway distance - an F-14 or F-15 needs more like 3,000 ft. So, maybe there's a commercial airport set up in the 20's that transitions to a military airfield in the 60's, as part of Cold War era air defense?

Basically, what's the purpose and specifics of the airport? I'd like to know more, which I think determines most of the implications of the OP.
 

kernals12

Banned
I've gotten so sick about asking about all these New York megaprojects that I created a TL where they happen. It's called New York Thinks Big.
I decided to make Floyd Bennet Field one of the main commercial airports and I put the other one on land reclaimed from Bayonne Harbor.
 
London City airport runways are 1,508 m or 4,948 feets long (according to wiki).
Which is a large part of the reason why LCY is limited in the size of aircraft that can operate from it. If you want an airport that is able to accept transatlantic flights or long distance ones from other regions of the US then I think you'd need longer runways, and past a certain point a wholly new site would start to look more attractive.
 

kernals12

Banned
Which is a large part of the reason why LCY is limited in the size of aircraft that can operate from it. If you want an airport that is able to accept transatlantic flights or long distance ones from other regions of the US then I think you'd need longer runways, and past a certain point a wholly new site would start to look more attractive.
I didn't think it would be able to replace both airports, but it seems like it could replace LaGuardia (although it would probably have the same name given the guy who suggested the idea.
 
That said, making a military airstrip on the island doesn't require nearly the same runway distance – an F-14 or F-15 needs more like 3,000 ft. So, maybe there's a commercial airport set up in the 20's that transitions to a military airfield in the 60's, as part of Cold War era air defense?
Alternatively you might see it being used as a Nike surface-to-air missile site–it was used as a base but no actual missiles were deployed there–or if the Air Force doesn't want to play nice and share a Bomarc surface-to-air missile site. IIRC the control centre for the New York Defence Area used to be on Staten Island before moving to New Jersey, Governor's Island looks fairly centrally located so they could perhaps decamp there instead.
 
IMO what some of you are missing is that you can't enlarge the island without restricting navigation in the harbor. Considering the amount of money being moved via cargo and passenger ships every single day, there is no way approval will be granted for an airport that includes making the island bigger, when the amount of money to be made is much smaller when comparing vessels versus air travel. If you can get the military off the island (remember this was an active military base) you can make the airport. But enlarging the island? That's going to be a lot harder to justify.
 
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