Early flights from fledgling airport that went on to become Heathrow
IT’S hard to imagine a London – or even a Britain – without Heathrow Airport.
From Christmas favourite Love Actually to the spy thriller The Bourne Ultimatum, Heathrow isn’t just the busiest airport in the UK, but a cultural heavyweight in its own right.
Admittedly no St Paul’s Cathedral to look at, it is nevertheless such an intrinsic part of the Londoner experience that over 80 million passengers travelled through it, whether from the capital or not, to cities all across the world, from as close by as Dublin to as far-flung as Singapore.
Obviously, Heathrow hasn’t existed forever. How can it, being an airport, with modern holidays abroad only really taking off – if you pardon the pun – after the Second World War?
Heathrow originated in 1928 as a small airfield in the region from which it takes its name.
Back then, Heathrow was just a hamlet outside London, and it was operated by the Air Ministry.
Yet, development of the airport beyond just being for military purposes began after the Second World War, with the government deciding to convert it into being fit for use by the public.
First opening to the masses in 1946 as London Airport, the first flight recorded taking off from the airport was a converted Lancastrian bomber called Starlight, which departed on January 1, 1946.
Requiring refuelling stops at Lisbon, West Africa and Brazil, the flight took around 35 hours to reach its final destination, Buenos Aires.
And its passengers were pretty starstudded in their own right, too.
Only numbering nine, the group included the British Ambassador to Portugal, Sir Owen St Clair O’Malley, and his wife, who wrote under the pen name Ann Bridges.
Bridges – whose real name was Lady Mary O’Malley – wrote 14 novels in total, most of them about her experiences abroad, as a result of her husband’s job.
And air hostess Mary Guthrie was reportedly very excited by one thing every flier today takes for granted; plane food.
“All I had to do was to unfreeze it and heat it in an electric oven,” remarked the 24-year-old.