American Airlines Launches Jet Age: First Boeing 707

American Airlines Flight 1, a Boeing 707-123 carrying 84 passengers, touched down in Los Angeles on January 25, 1959, completing the first scheduled transcontinental jet passenger service in the United States. The New York-to-Los Angeles route, which had taken propeller aircraft roughly eight hours with stops, now took four hours and three minutes nonstop. The jet age had arrived for ordinary American travelers. The 707 had been a $16 million gamble by Boeing, which risked the entire company''s net worth on the bet that commercial aviation would go jet. Pan Am had inaugurated transatlantic 707 service in October 1958, but American Airlines'' domestic route was the one that mattered most commercially: the New York-Los Angeles corridor was the highest-revenue route in the country. American Airlines president C.R. Smith had ordered 30 of the aircraft, committing $400 million (about $4 billion today) before a single plane was delivered. The 707 was a revelation. Passengers accustomed to the vibration, noise, and relatively low altitude of propeller planes found themselves cruising smoothly at 35,000 feet and 550 miles per hour. The aircraft carried up to 181 passengers in a single-class configuration, though the early flights offered first-class luxury with meals served on china. The jet was so fast that it created scheduling problems: American Airlines discovered that a 707 could make the round trip and be ready for another flight before the crew had finished their required rest period. The transcontinental jet route collapsed time and distance in ways that reshaped American culture. Business travelers who previously budgeted two days for a cross-country trip could now go coast-to-coast and back in a single day. Hollywood and New York, separated by a continent, became effectively four hours apart. The 707 also democratized air travel: as airlines competed on price to fill the larger jets, fares dropped and passenger numbers soared. Between 1958 and 1965, domestic airline passengers doubled. American aviation would never look back.