Word: cometted
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When Britain began testing the world's first jet airliner three years ago, U.S. plane builders and airline executives alike looked down their noses. De Havilland's Comet, they said, would gobble too much fuel too fast to carry much payload, could not even pay its way. By last week the skeptics were changing their tune a bit. After four months in commercial operation, the Comet was beginning to look like the new queen of the airways...
...London, Former Prime Minister Clement Attlee and his wife boarded BOAC's new Comet jet airliner and whooshed off to Rhodesia for a two weeks' visit...
...London time one misty afternoon last week, exactly on schedule, the commercial jet air age began. The dolphin-bodied de Havilland jet liner Comet got the take-off signal, swept down the runway at London Airport, its four turbines whistling a high pitch, and climbed seven miles into the air carrying a full load of 36 passengers, six crewmen and 30 bags of mail. The next day, as thousands watched at Johannesburg's Palmietfontein Airport, the silver and blue BOAC jet streaked down, ending its 6,724-mile trip. Total elapsed time: 23 hours, 38 minutes. This...
...gobbles its fuel many times faster than a propeller plane, made five stops: Rome, Beirut, Khartoum, Entebbe and Livingstone. Actually, as BOAC officials proudly pointed out, they were not trying to set speed records, just trying to fly a schedule they will meet thrice weekly, beginning next month. The Comet hit a top average speed of 525 m.p.h. on the Rome-Beirut leg, dawdled 46 minutes overtime at Khartoum's airport, wasted another half-hour at Livingstone, then regained so quickly that on the last leg Pilot R. C. Alabaster said: "We made wide sweeps to kill time...
With his new Comet service, Straight is banking on jets to make BOAC one of Britain's biggest dollar-earners. By June, the line will have five Comets on hand, be able to step up the Johannesburg flights to thrice weekly. When four more Comets are received, probably by year's end, BOAC hopes to launch Comet service between New York and Bermuda and New York and the Bahamas. Because of its rapid fuel consumption and limited range, BOAC can't use the Comet on the rich North Atlantic run. But it has ordered eleven...