Time Flies: The Heathrow Story

by Alan Gallop

On January 1, 1946 a handful of staff at London’s new peace-time airport, Heathrow, prepared to handle its first commercial flight in a converted Lancaster bomber, carrying 10 passengers and some newly demobbed RAF pilots, radio officers, and flight engineers on an epic journey to South America. Sixty-five years, over 14 million flights and 1.4 billion passengers later, Heathrow—with a staff of around 50,000 people—recently saw its controversial fifth passenger terminal weather a rocky start and find its feet as an integral part of this ever-expanding airport. Time Flies is a fascinating history of Heathrow from its pioneering first days in bruised and battered postwar West London, right up to its present. Bringing together Heathrow’s human and commercial histories and using first-hand stories from each decade of the airport’s operations, this is a balanced and entertaining look at the triumphs, tribulations, and controversies that made Heathrow what it is today.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012