1959 - the new 20th Street Terminal at Miami International Airport
Miami International Airport, Florida
The airport hotel had not been constructed over the terminal, only the seven story office tower with the FAA Miami TRACON taking up the entire 7th floor of the tower. Concourse 1 is not under construction yet.
Hi Cecil, thank you for posting your memories of the open-air concourses at the new terminal and the smoke coming in whenever a propliner started up. The exhaust smell of the new jets also came into the concourses and when they made their turn away from the concourse to taxi out the thrust would cause a good wind to come into the concourse and blow hats off of gents and ladies. You could say that things weren't well thought out back in those days. People would freak out these days if they encountered normal operating conditions from the '50's through late '60's/early '70's. Hang in there Cecil!
Don .
Cecil Vernon Smith
09-Jan-2017 04:34
My father worked line maintenance for Eastern at the terminal in the early 1960s. I can remember as a child going to the terminal to fly out of Miami to visit relatives. In those days the ticket counter area of the terminal was air conditioned but the concourse area at Eastern was not. We would walk down the concourse to our boarding gate and be blasted with smoke from the piston engine aircraft as they would start their engines. The smoke would linger for several minutes as it came through the jealousies windows.