Jet Airliner - First Generation

First Generation

The first purpose-built jet airliner was the British de Havilland Comet which first flew in 1949 and entered service in 1952. Also developed in 1949 was the Avro Canada Jetliner, and although it never reached production, the term jetliner caught on as a generic term for all passenger jet aircraft.

These first jet airliners were followed some years later by the Sud Aviation Caravelle, Tupolev Tu-104 (2nd in service), Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8, and Convair 880. National prestige was attached to developing prototypes and bringing these first generation designs into service. There was also a strong nationalism in purchasing policy, such that the Boeing and Douglas products became closely associated with Pan Am, while BOAC ordered British made Comets.

These two airlines with strong nautical traditions of command hierarchy rank and chain of command, retained from their days of operations with flying boats, were undoubtably quick to capitalize upon, with the help of advertising agencies, the linkings of the "speed of jets" with the safety and secure "luxury of ocean liners" among public perception.

Aeroflot used Soviet Tupolevs, while Air France introduced French Caravelles. Commercial realities dictated exceptions, however, as few airlines could risk missing out on a superior product: American Airlines ordered the pioneering Comet (but later cancelled when the Comet ran into fatigue problems), Canadian, British and European airlines could not ignore the better operating economics of the Boeing 707 and the DC-8, while some American airlines ordered the Caravelle.

Boeing became the most successful of the early manufacturers. The KC-135 Stratotanker and military versions of the 707 remain operational, mostly as tankers or freighters. The basic configuration of the Boeing, Convair and Douglas aircraft jet airliner designs, with widely spaced podded engines under slung on pylons beneath a swept wing, proved to be the most common arrangement and was most easily compatible with the large-diameter high-bypass turbofan engines that subsequently prevailed for reasons of quietness and fuel efficiency.

The de Havilland and Tupolev designs had engines incorporated within the wings next to the fuselage, a concept that endured only within military designs while the Caravelle pioneered engines mounted either side of the rear fuselage.