Technical advantages and challenges

Whittle, von Ohain, and others met resistance to their ideas because conventional thinkers believed that the jet engine would produce too little power and consume too much fuel to be economically practical. It was not generally recognized that at higher altitudes the jet would produce more power with acceptable fuel efficiency. Understandably, even the most dedicated engine experts did not anticipate the rapid pace at which jet-engine performance would be improved.

It happened that the jet engine entered the propulsion scene at a time when conventional reciprocating engines and propellers were reaching their physical limits. Propellers were already encountering supersonic tip-speeds that destroyed their efficiency, and engines had grown so complex that additional horsepower in the 3,000–4,000 range depended on a large number of cylinders and complex supercharging that generated problems in operation and maintenance.

With their continuous rotary motion, jet engines were mechanically simpler and smoother than reciprocating pistons with their rough pounding. Jet engines developed rapidly and by 1950 had reached levels of power that were impossible with piston engines. Reciprocating engines for aircraft had reached a practical limit with the 3,500-horsepower, 28-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-4360 engine, while some modern jet engines, such as the General Electric GE90-115, can produce as much as 115,000 pounds of thrust. The R-4360 engines powered the last generation of piston-powered bombers—namely, the Boeing B-50, which was in frontline service for only a few years as a bomber before being relegated to a (jet-assisted) tanker role. In contrast, the Boeing 777, using the GE90-115 engine, first flew in 2003 and has remained in service for two decades. Thrust and horsepower are difficult to equate, but one pound of thrust is equivalent to one horsepower at 375 miles (600 km) per hour.

It was not immediately obvious that the jet engine required major advances in airframe design and support facilities. First, airframes needed to be much larger to carry the additional passengers required to make jet aircraft economically sound. They would also have to be much stronger to accommodate the pressurized fuselage and the many transitions between low altitudes for takeoffs and landings and high altitudes for cruising. Another structural change was to sweep the wings back to reduce the drag increase associated with approaching supersonic flight. This was a possibility first elucidated by German engineer Adolph Buseman in 1935 and a few years later independently by Robert T. Jones at the U.S. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). In addition, aircraft and ground instrumentation became far more sophisticated. Ground handling equipment to service the aircraft also was vastly improved, as was airport infrastructure for refueling, loading, and unloading. Navigation and en-route surveillance were also much improved to handle the initial growth of jet traffic but subsequently had to be overhauled again when the number of flights grew to the point of saturating air traffic control capability.

It was recognized almost from the start that the higher construction cost of the jet airliner would need to be amortized through intensive use. What was not initially known, though, was the greater longevity that jet airliners would have compared with their piston-engine predecessors. The improvement in engine operation has been the most spectacular, with jet engines now having intervals between overhauls that run into tens of thousands of hours and with corrosion and molecular decay rather than wear being the biggest maintenance problem.

While advances in jet aviation have been phenomenal, the industry faces greater risks than ever before. The growth in performance has been matched by a growth in cost and a diminution of the number of aircraft required by civil and military customers. Commercial airliners are more cost effective than ever before and last longer. And development of new aircraft costs billions of dollars, requiring a continued growth in passenger traffic to keep production levels steady or climbing.

The airlines reequip

In Britain, the production of advanced commercial aircraft had been abandoned during the war, while the greater capacity and efficiency of American industry allowed the creation of the long-distance piston-engine Douglas C-54 (DC-4) and Lockheed C-69 Constellation aircraft. A committee headed by aviation pioneer and former member of Parliament John Moore-Brabazon was established in 1943 to discuss postwar prospects of reviving the British air-transport industry, and among the suggestions was a specification for a transatlantic mailplane. De Havilland began design studies that led to the first flight of the D.H. 106 Comet jet airliner on July 27, 1949. Britain had stolen a march on the world, for the 36-seat Comet could fly at 500 miles (800 km) per hour for up to 1,500 miles (2,400 km).

Boeing, Douglas, and Lockheed were stunned; though the Comet was considered too small and too short-ranged for American airline routes, they could offer no jet competitor. Britain’s great lead went down in flames, however, when several Comets crashed, which led to its withdrawal from service in 1954. The later crashes were ultimately attributed to structural failure of the pressure cabin because of metal fatigue.

Boeing made a great advance with its revolutionary B-47 bomber, first flown on Dec. 17, 1947. The six-engine, swept-wing aircraft was purchased in large quantities (2,032) by the U.S. Air Force. This gave Boeing the engineering and financial basis to create the Model 367-80, a prototype for both the later 707 passenger plane and the KC-135 tanker. Although a tremendous gamble for Boeing, which for many years had been almost entirely a military supplier, the 707 was a commercial success after entering service in 1958. Douglas responded with its similar looking DC-8. Both aircraft were larger (some configurations could carry more than 200 passengers) and faster (more than 600 miles [965 km] per hour) than the modified Comet 4 that began service on the New York to London route on Oct. 4, 1958.

Boeing and Douglas quickly dominated the market, making it difficult for a later entry, the CV-880, from Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, more commonly known as Convair, to gain a foothold. Convair had stressed speed rather than passenger capacity, but the 880 and the improved 990 that followed it were commercial disasters that almost forced the company out of business.

Britain tried desperately to regain its footing in the airliner market but found that its Commonwealth route structures required specialized aircraft designs that were not competitive with the Boeing and Douglas products in the world market. The British had their greatest success with turboprop airliners, in which the propulsive power of the jet engines was transferred to a propeller through a gear box. The most prominent of these was the Vickers Viscount, which was built in larger numbers (444) than any other British airliner. The Viscount could carry from 40 to 65 passengers at a cruising speed of 355 to 365 miles (570 to 590 km) per hour, depending on configuration. It was employed most extensively by British European Airways. Other British jet airliners, such as the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) One-Eleven, the Vickers VC-10, and the Hawker Siddeley Aviation Trident, were produced in relatively small numbers and were not outstanding commercial successes because of the superb production and marketing of equivalent U.S. airliners.

France succeeded with its first effort at a jet airliner, creating the Sud-Est (later Aérospatiale) SE 210 Caravelle, a medium-range turbojet intended primarily for the continental European market. First flown on May 27, 1955, the Caravelle achieved sales of 282 aircraft, and a turbofan-powered variant was used for domestic routes by airlines in the United States—a marketing coup at the time. The Caravelle was the world’s first airliner to have rear-mounted engines, a design feature that was adopted for some uses by all other major manufacturers.

Aérospatiale joined with British Aerospace to create a technological masterpiece, the beautiful supersonic transport (SST) Concorde airliner, the first example of which flew on March 2, 1969. The development costs of the Concorde were so great that they could never be recovered from operations, so, for reasons of national prestige, they were simply written off. The Concorde was flown as a prestige flagship airliner on the transatlantic routes for both Air France and British Airways PLC, but its noise and operating expense limited its service. Only 14 went into service, with the last of them being retired in 2003; the Concorde proved a technical miracle but an economic disaster.

Jet airliners were a genuine requirement for the Soviet Union because of its vast expanse of territory, which included 10 time zones. The Tupolev Tu-104 prototype made its first flight on June 17, 1955, only 11 months after the first flight of the Boeing 367–80 but 30 months before the first flight of a production 707. Tupolev had leaped ahead by using the components of the Tu-16 bomber, adding only a new 55-seat pressurized fuselage. The Tu-104 served well and reliably for many years but would not have been considered for use by Western airlines because of its high operating costs. It began a dynasty of Tupolev airliners that continues to this day, including the first supersonic passenger airliner, the Tu-144. The prototype Soviet SST made its first flight on Dec. 31, 1968, and was so similar in appearance and performance to the more highly publicized Anglo-French Concorde that it was called the “Concordski.” The Tu-144 was not successful and was withdrawn from service in June 1978 after several fatal accidents, which included one at its international debut at the 1973 Paris Air Show.

Tupolev’s efforts were complemented by those of Ilyushin, which has produced a long series of successful turboprop and jet airliners that in recent years have benefited by access to Western engines and electronics technology. After the collapse of the Soviet Union on Dec. 25, 1991, the great Soviet airline Aeroflot was broken up, and former satellite countries began to look to the West for airliners that were more economical to operate. The result was an immense reduction in both development and production of Russian airliners and an utter incapability to compete with Western airliner builders.