1960’s VTOL Airport

A small bit of art from the FAA showing a waterside (Chicago? New York? Davenport?) airport for VTOL jetliners. In the late 1960’s, NASA and the FAA were quite interested in small VTOL airliners, roughly the size of the 737 or smaller, for short urban routes. As can be seen here, the airports for such jetliners could in theory be quite small, as full-length runways would not be needed.  Instead of one huge airport well outside of town, a  number of smaller airports could be scattered around the urban area. The advantage here is that instead of a two hour drive to the airport, fighting rush hour gridlock the whole way… a quick bus ride ten blocks over could get you to your regularly scheduled business-class flight (with, as this was the 60’s, a crew of “sexy stews,” passengers wearing suits and the air full of cigarette smoke and the smell of booze).

Of course, it’s interesting to note the fact that the airport was right next to a large body of water… if that jetliner has a vertical-thrust engine failure on final approach, it’s going to come down *somewhere,* and Wall Street might not be the best place for a jetliner at 1000 feet and 20 knots airspeed to try to make a decent half-powered landing.

VTOL jetliners and downtown VTOL airports were concepts that had pretty much faded by the mid/late 1970s’s. VTOL jetliners are capable of doing many things… and near the top of that list is “blowing through vast amounts of jet fuel” followed quickly by “making one hell of a racket.” In the post-cheap-oil days, the novelty of the concept faded pretty fast. Certainly VTOL jetliners coluld be built with todays engines and materials (not to mention control computers) that would perform vastly better than 1960’s tech would have allowed… but what are the chances that any city is goign to buy off on the concept of jetliners flying off rooftops in midtown?