In 1931, architect Charles Glover proposed to increase airborne traffic by building an elevated airport above the railway sidings of King’s Cross.

It was a remarkable plan: a pinwheel arrangement of concrete runways, supported directly on top of new buildings, allowing planes to take off in different directions across the city. 

Like other plans for runways built over the Thames, King’s Cross airport didn’t quite see the light of day. But the perennial problem of air capacity and obsolescent air infrastructure could be very different today if they had.