AVIATION: Hub of the World

The world's largest commercial airport opened last week. Its official name was New York International Airport, but millions of New Yorkers knew it as "Idlewild," the name of a golf course that it displaced. The 4,900-acre airport (on Long Island, 38 minutes' drive from Manhattan's Airlines Terminal) covers an area as large as Manhattan Island from 42nd Street to the Battery; its 35 all-weather krypton flash approach lights (3,300,000,000 peak beam candlepower) are the brightest ever made by man. Idlewild's ten miles of paved runways (six strips completed, one under construction) will...