Why You Wouldn't Want to Fly The First Jet Airliner: De Havilland Comet Story

Air travel before the Jet Age wasn’t always glamorous. The relentless noise and vibration from a piston powered propeller aircraft often made long flights even more exhausting. Most aircraft also couldn’t fly high enough to avoid bad weather, so air sickness was more common.

After World War Two, as part of an effort to develop its civil aviation industry, Britain stunned the world by unveiling the world's jet airliner. The de Havilland Comet was sleek, quiet, and flew higher and faster than any airliner of the day. As piston propeller technology was reaching its limits, the conventional thinking was that jet engines were too unreliable and produced too little power relative to their fuel consumption. But the de Havilland Comet proved that jet travel was the future. When the Comet entered service in 1952, it immediately began breaking travel time records and became a point of national pride for Britain.

The de Havilland Comet was perhaps little too ahead of it’s time. With such a clean sheet design, there will still lessons to learn. When early Comets suffered from catastrophic depressurization incidents, the entire fleet was grounded and their Certificate of Airworthiness was revoked. Flaws in the design of the aircraft’s fuselage were resolved in later Comet versions. However, the rest of the world was now catching up, and manufacturers including Boeing and Douglas began to offer their own jet airliners. While later version Comets served airlines reliably, they were outsold by competing aircraft. There's no question However, that the comet paved the way. The British had taken a massive risk and brought the world into the jet age. #DeHavilland #CometAirliner #Airplane

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[erikig]

Gotta love how the engines are integrated in the wings, so sleek...

[TalenGryphon]

Its a shame the Comet was a failure. Those intergrated engines and smooth 50's futurism lines are downright sexy

[GloomGaiGar]

I'm no engineer but I just find the engines incorporated into the wings to be so sexy unlike today's airliners where they just hang under the wings like ballsacks.

[rickbelieves]

I flew on a Comet as a kid....I remember thinking it was cool looking, and then found out about its colorful history much later.

[MikMoen]

Having your plane "disintegrate" around you at 40, 000 ft above ocean doesn't sound like a particularly good way to go..

[jaxxonad]

beside the Concorde, this is by far one of the most beautiful passenger jets ever made.

[thekingofdarts]

Easily one of the sexiest hunks of metal to have ever flown.

[wyqtor]

Fun fact: Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, whose company made the Comet, was the cousin of actress Olivia de Havilland, who just recently passed away.

[Zulfburht]

it actually still looks kinda futuristic to this day

[jordyboy]

I help maintain the worlds only running comet here in England. Being a 4c (most up to date) variant, the 4 rolls Royce avons still whirl into life with ease after all these years. We do have some minor hydraulic and electrical faults but she can still move under her own power.

[Jerry-qtgk]

Remember that this is just 45 years after planes were invented.

[tayzonday]

So the Comet ended up being an expensive “beta test” that taught all future competitors how to make passenger jets correctly.

[doktorbimmer]

*_"The comet shattered conventional thinking..."_** it also shattered when it reached cruising altitude.*

[Wayne]

I was on a that ill fated aircraft, BOAC (British Overseas Air Corp.) Comet. Gilmore family was on flight #783/057 May 2
1953. My mother, my sister Angela and myself Wayne were aboard. Had mother not been expecting and been too tired to continue
and insist that we wait till the next day so she may rest I would not be typing this today. We left and flew out on a conventional
Prop plane the next day.

[kingjames]

the comet almost looks more futuristic than modern planes lol.

[anonykip]

Man that whole intro up until the title is gorgeously made. I love how the British Loop music fades in. 👍👍👍

[DeathbyPixels]

Sometimes I randomly remember just how genuinely incredible it is that we have designed giant metal machines capable of true flight.

[ztoob]

1:09 - "It *shattered* conventional thinking." Now, that right there is some quality foreshadowing.

[chrisjohnson]

To all those armchair experts who call this plane a failure....yes, it was. Someone had to be first, and DeHavillands learnt a lot from the metal fatigue etc. The variants of the Comet (Nimrod) gave good service until 2011. Not bad for a (basically)1940s plane from a small island.

[maxthelab]

I flew on Comets as a child in the 60's - and almost all other jets right through from the 60's to now, including several trips to the US by Concorde. It's been alot of fun!