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The jet age

Jet engines roughly doubled the speed of air travel in the 1950s. Each generation since has carried more people, further, for less fuel. These are the aircraft that marked each step.

From propellers to jets

Before jets, airliners like the Douglas DC-3 used piston engines and flew low, through the weather. Jets fly high above most of it, which made flights faster and smoother. The first jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet, entered service in 1952. Early Comets broke up in flight because of metal fatigue around their windows, and what investigators learned changed how every later airliner was built.

Wide-bodies and twins

The wide-body 747 arrived in 1970 and made long-haul travel affordable. Then engines became reliable enough that two could do the work of three or four. Rules known as ETOPS now let twins fly far from the nearest airport, which is why most long-haul flights today use twins like the 787 and A350.

The milestones, in order of first flight

1. 1955
   Sud Aviation Caravelle

   France’s short-haul jet, with its engines on the rear fuselage: a layout copied by many later jets.

2. 1958
   de Havilland Comet 4

   The first jet airliner family. After the early Comets were grounded in 1954, the strengthened Comet 4 flew the first transatlantic jet service in October 1958.

3. 1962
   Boeing 707-320B

   Weeks after the Comet 4, Pan Am started 707 services from New York to Paris. Bigger, faster and longer-ranged, the 707 made the jet age mainstream.

4. 1967
   Douglas DC-8-63

   Douglas’s answer to the 707. Stretched “Super Sixty” DC-8s carried up to 259 passengers.

5. 1967
   Boeing 727-200

   Three engines at the back let it use shorter runways. For years the best-selling jet airliner.

6. 1967
   Boeing 737-200

   The small twin that grew into the best-selling airliner family of all.

7. 1969
   Boeing 747-100

   The first wide-body. Twice the seats of a 707 made long-haul flying affordable for millions.

8. 1969
   Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde

   Supersonic travel: London or Paris to New York in about three and a half hours, until it retired in 2003.

9. 1974
   Airbus A300B4

   Airbus’s first aircraft and the first twin-engine wide-body. Two engines instead of three or four cut costs.

10. 1987
    Airbus A320

    The first airliner with digital fly-by-wire controls, flown with sidesticks instead of control columns.

11. 1994
    Boeing 777-200

    A big twin built for long overwater flights from day one.

12. 2005
    Airbus A380

    The largest passenger airliner, with two full decks.

13. 2009
    Boeing 787-8

    A fuselage made mostly of carbon-fibre composite: lighter, so it burns less fuel.

14. 2013
    Airbus A350-900

    Airbus’s composite long-hauler, and today’s typical long-haul twin alongside the 787.

Years are the first flight of the variant listed, which can be a few years after the family’s first flight.