Before September 11, 2001, commercial airliners and civil aircraft regularly shared the skyline with the World Trade Center towers. Because Lower Manhattan sits in close proximity to Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), LaGuardia Airport (LGA), and John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), aircraft banking over the Hudson and East Rivers were a standard visual feature of the New York metropolitan airspace throughout the late 20th century.
The Twin Towers stood at 1,368 feet (North Tower) and 1,362 feet (South Tower). Flights departing or approaching Newark and LaGuardia frequently traversed corridors over the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay, placing incoming and outgoing air traffic within clear visual range of Lower Manhattan.
During the design phase in the mid-1960s, lead structural engineer Leslie Robertson and the Port Authority designed the towers to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, the largest commercial jetliner in service at the time, assuming a lost aircraft searching for a landing site in heavy fog.
Air France and British Airways Concordes flying in or out of JFK were frequently photographed climbing past the Manhattan skyline with the towers framed in the background. Local sightseeing helicopters, police aircraft, and small private planes operated routinely in the low-altitude Hudson River VFR (Visual Flight Rules) corridor adjacent to the complex.
Following the tragedy, airspace rules over Manhattan were permanently altered, heavily restricting low-altitude civilian flights over the city.
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