localareaburlax

Los Angeles Local Aeronautical Chart (of 1956)
          The Burbank / Los Angeles area.

           This is a portion of a 1956 Los Angeles Local Aeronautical Chart Series. The scale and detail is similar to what we see nowadays on a TCA Chart. Notice any differences?
          Santa Susana Airport, west of VNY is now a subdivision. As some of you may remember it would thoroughly test your skills at short field landings. There was a hillside on short final that forced you to fly Final on an angle and there was a large tree just before the threshold.
          San Fernando Airport is an industrial park area today. It had a narrow and relatively short runway. An LA councilman who lived west of the airport forced the pattern to be on the east side of runways 1/19. It didn't matter that this interferred dangerously with the Whiteman Airport traffic pattern. Unfamiliar pilots at both airports sometimes unwittingly overlapped their patterns. Downwind and Base Leg were over the hills near where the Foothill Freeway runs today.
          There are probably few pilots around now who remember Grand Central Airport in Glendale! It was located near the Ventura and Golden State Freeway Interchange adjacent to the Southern Pacific RR tracks. A lot of famous people landed there.
          Notice that Hughes Airport just north of LAX no longer exists.
          Van Nuys Airport, which at that time was known as San Fernando Valley Airport, shows only one north-south runway but the old "east-west runway" is there.
          Notice how Santa Monica Airport shows two runways.
          LAX still has only one set of parallel runways.
          Most noticeable are the Low Frequency Ranges such as just west of BUR and at Newhall. VORs were few and far between. The "Radio" Navigation Aids (VORs) of Fillmore, Palmdale, Los Angeles, Ontario (now Paradise), and Long Beach (now Seal Beach) are all there were in Southern California from Carpenteria to Antelope Valley to Newport Beach. VORs such as VNY, SMO, POM, SNA, etc did not exist. As a result the airways that we know today were fewer in number and in somewhat different locations. On the back side of this chart is a table of Aerodromes and related data that is displayed on the chart. Click here for that chart.