Fifty years ago Britain ushered the world into the jet age. On October 4, 1958, two de Havilland Comet 4 aircraft powered by Rolls-Royce jet engines crossed the Atlantic, an historic first that beat the Americans by three weeks.

The two British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) aircraft took off from London Airport (now Heathrow) and New York Idlewild (JFK) simultaneously and passed each other in the mid-Atlantic.

The Comet's jet engines and aluminium fuselage allowed it to fly higher and faster than earlier propeller-driven aircraft, reducing journey times and improving comfort. The flight from New York to London, which was captained by T.B. Stoney, a holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross, took six hours and eleven minutes, a record — and about the same journey time as today.

The Comet was a revolutionary advance in aviation, allowing passengers to travel above the weather in a pressurised cabin, ending the bumpy, noisy and excruciatingly long transatlantic journeys of earlier years. Fares were £173 return in Deluxe and £155 in First and the aircraft seated80 people. The toilets were called “powder rooms”, the cabin decor was described as “quietly elegant”.

The Comet's transatlantic crossing was a significant achievement for both de Havilland, which had built the Mosquito fighter bomber during the Second World War, and for BOAC. BOAC's Comet beat Pan Am's Boeing 707 by three weeks, a marketing coup that helped to lay the foundations of the transatlantic dominance of British Airways.

According to Jim Davies, a volunteer at the British Airways museum at Heathrow: “This flight was a huge achievement for BOAC, as it put them in front of the Americans, but it was also a major step change in transatlantic travel in terms of comfort and speed.”

The Comet's success came despite a development period blighted by a number of fatal crashes. The project started in 1945 when de Havilland was contracted to use jet technology developed during the War to design a civilian mail plane.

The first aircraft flew in 1949 and had square windows, a design feature that nearly ended the jet age before it had properly begun. Three Comet aircraft crashed in 1952 and 1953, which led to a redesign of the wing, and two more aircraft crashed in 1954. Investigators could find no cause for these crashes, but engineers discovered that the repeated pressurisation and depressurisation of the fuselage weakened the aluminium. This metal fatigue caused cracks to appear at the edges of the square windows, which resulted in the aircraft breaking up in mid-air.

The Comet was redesigned with round windows, but its reputation never fully recovered, despite the transatlantic triumph of 1958. BOAC switched to the Boeing 707 in the 1960s, although the Comet survives today in its militarised form, the Nimrod, which the Royal Air Force continues to operate for airborne surveillance missions.

Doug McVitie, managing director of Arran Aerospace, an aviation consultancy, said: “Moving to jet engines was the biggest change in the history of aviation since the Wright Brothers. The first transatlantic jet flight was an important milestone — and it was a British success.”

BOAC became British Airways in 1974 and de Havilland was bought by Hawker Sidley in 1960, which in turn became part of BAE Systems.

Flight of fancy?

371
The number of minutes it took for the Comet to fly to London from New York on its maiden flight

80
Number of passengers the Comet could accommodate

£173
Price of return trip, Deluxe class

Source: Times Datebase

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