Landis View Recalls Debate Over 2d Airport

by Morton Mintz

Thursday, December 29, 1960

Like a fogbound plane without instruments, the problem of a second civil airport circled over Washington for years, alarming first one group and then another until President Eisenhower took the controls from a platoon of would-be pilots and set it down hard at Chantilly, Va.

Now, three years later, James M. Landis, the President-elect's adviser on regulatory agencies, is still so shaken up that he's inclined to favor taking off again and landing anew at Andrews Air Force Base.

He told The Washington Post on Tuesday that Andrews, which is 10 miles closer to the District than Dulles International Airport at Chantilly, would have been the preferable site for a jet-age airport.

He termed it “non sense” from the defense standpoint to retain Andrew's for the area military, now consolidating flight operations there, and said it is the military who should have been told to move farther out.

What Landis says now is what was advocated — futilely — six years ago by Rep. Joe T. Broyhill (R-Va.). He was anxious to keep a second civil airport out of Fairfax County.

One former high Government official who was long and intimately involved in the controversy and who fought to take over Andrews from the military, said yesterday that what seemed to he practical in 1955 is all but impossible today.

This person, who would not permit use of his name, gave these reasons:

• The $100-million Dulles Airport is far along toward completion; it is scheduled to become operational early in 1962.

• Andrews is in the midst of a $75-million expansion to adapt it for consolidated military flying operations.

• The 9800-acre Dulles is intended to meet jet-plane requirements at least through 1975. Andrews is on a 4450-acre site that could not be expanded significantly except at enormous cost. Even a few years ago it was not realized that a site as large as the one at Chantilly would be needed.

The former official said that if Andrews were to have been chosen, the right time was 1953, when the Eisenhower Administration took office. By 1958, when the President chose Chantilly, he said, it was too late because in the intervening years the Air Force invested huge sums in Andrews, including $5 million for a hospital that would be of questionable civilian use.

Spurred by increasing overcrowding at National Airport, the Truman Administration had decided on a 4500-acre site at Burke, 20 miles from Washington. Subsequently the Justice Department condemned 1000 acres. The hope – or fear – that Burke would be the site lingered long, but fatal opposition arose in Congress.

In April, 1953, Mr. Eisenhower ordered a study of possible joint military-civilian use of Andrews. The Air Force resisted, powerfully backed by "squatters' rights" and then Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson.

Also opposed were nearby residents of Andrews and the Maryland Congressional delegation which wanted the President to designate Friendship International Airport near Baltimore.

A month later, then Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks announced that an agreement "in principle" on joint use had been reached with the Air Force. The agreement never materialized.

By December, 1955, Commerce was terming joint use "dangerous." When Mr. Eisenhower ruled in January, 1958, Andrews was deemed to be out of the question. The choice lay between Burke and Chantilly. And the overriding issue was this:

Burke was closer to Washington. But its flight patterns would overlap National's and force a cutback in its operations. More distant Chantilly's flight patterns would not conflict with National's and would, therefore, be safer for both.

It was on the recommendation of the President's adviser on air matters, Elwood. R. Quesada, that Mr. Eisenhower chose Chantilly.

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