Boeing 707 Crosses Atlantic: Jet Age Takes Flight

Pan American World Airways Flight 114 lifted off from New York's Idlewild Airport at 7:20 p.m. on October 26, 1958, carrying 111 passengers across the Atlantic to Paris in just over eight hours. The Boeing 707 that made the journey was not the first jet airliner in commercial service; Britain's de Havilland Comet had beaten it by six years. But the 707 was the aircraft that made jet travel commercially viable, and its maiden transatlantic voyage marked the true beginning of the jet age. Boeing had gambled $16 million of its own money, roughly a quarter of the company's net worth, to build the prototype in 1954. The company's president, William Allen, bet that airlines would want a jet transport even though none had ordered one. The prototype, designated the Model 367-80 or "Dash 80," flew in July 1954 and immediately demonstrated performance that propeller-driven aircraft could not match: cruising speeds above 550 miles per hour at altitudes above 30,000 feet, cutting transatlantic flight times nearly in half. Pan Am's Juan Trippe, the most visionary airline executive of his generation, placed the first order for twenty 707s in 1955, triggering a rush of orders from competing airlines that could not afford to let Pan Am monopolize jet service. The 707's four Pratt & Whitney JT3C turbojet engines produced a combined 44,000 pounds of thrust, carrying up to 189 passengers in a pressurized cabin that was wider, quieter, and more comfortable than any propeller aircraft in service. The October 26 flight was a public relations triumph. Passengers paid premium fares for the privilege of being among the first transatlantic jet travelers. The flight arrived in Paris to enormous press coverage. Within two years, every major airline in the world was either flying 707s or ordering them. The 707 transformed air travel from a luxury into a mass-market service. Ticket prices dropped as the aircraft's greater speed and capacity reduced per-passenger costs. Transatlantic passenger traffic, which had been dominated by ocean liners, shifted overwhelmingly to aircraft within a decade. Boeing sold more than 1,000 707s and established a dominance in commercial aviation that the company maintained for half a century. The Dash 80 prototype hangs today in the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center, a monument to the bet that changed how the world moves.