Transport & space · 1952

Jet airliner

The de Havilland Comet begins passenger jet service, halving journey times.

The Comet 1 entered service in May 1952, cruising near 740 km/h with a pressurized cabin above the weather. Fatigue failures from square-cornered windows grounded it in 1954, and the investigation founded modern metal-fatigue engineering. Later jets built on those lessons.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Jet engine 1939
Douglas DC-3 1936

What it led to 3

Boeing 707 1958
Concorde 1969
Airbus A320 fly-by-wire 1987

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Transatlantic crossing time Latest: 3.5 hours (1976) Source: Wikipedia: Transatlantic crossing, duration list; Geography of Transport Systems: liner transatlantic crossing times

US air passenger traffic, 1930-1993 Latest: 772B passenger-km (1993) Source: Our World in Data