The date was Saturday, October 4, 1958. In another significant first for Britain’s pioneering aviation industry, a jet-powered airliner carried passengers on a transatlantic flight for the very first time. The airline was British Overseas Airways Corporation, better known as BOAC, and the airplane was the magnificent Comet 4. With its sleek futuristic shape, ghostly sound, and bare metal undersides polished to a mirror finish, this elegant airliner turned heads upon its arrival at New York’s Idlewild Airport.
A larger improved version of the original de Havilland Comet 1 first flown in July 1949, the Comet IV flew in April 1958, carried 81 passengers, and cruised at 503 mph with a range of 3,225 miles. (The smaller Comet 1 had 36 seats and flew only 1,500 miles.) BOAC operated their proud fleet of 19 Comet 4s on routes from London to Montreal and New York in North America, plus Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires in South America.
Eastbound, these four-engine jetliners carried passengers to such exotic locales as Rome, Cairo, and Johannesburg, (with stops along the way), plus Karachi, Bombay, Singapore, Sidney, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Although 15 world airlines plus the Royal Air Force flew Comets, it was always BOAC that was most synonymous with the type. (Pan American World Airways even placed provisional orders, but ultimately went with the Boeing 707.)
The accompanying advertisement seen in FLIGHT Magazine in September 1959 shows a factory fresh BOAC Comet 4 taking off from de Havilland’s main facility at Hatfield, England. Promotional copy to the right of the world map is perhaps a not-so-subtle swipe at rival Pam American, whose slogan since the 1930s had been “First Across the Atlantic, First Across the Pacific, First To South America, and First Around the World.” The last line of this list, however, is simply an irrefutable statement – “First Jet Airliner,” period.
While the Comet 4 and its several variants commanded the commercial jetliner market in the beginning, they were eventually overtaken by the larger, faster, and more powerful Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 jets. BOAC introduced another stunning airliner with the Vickers Super VC-10 in 1965, by which time the Comet had been relegated to short-haul and charter service. The last commercial airline flight of a Comet was made in November 1980 by Dan-Air which operated the world’s largest fleet of Comets.
