De Havilland Comet

After watching the BBC’s ‘Secret Life of Airports‘ on iplayer today, I was awed by the gleaming luxury,  the servile perfection and the absolute deistic grace of the De Havilland Comet. The Comet was the world’s first commercial jet airliner, a landmark of aeronautical design. It first flew in the 1949 and was pioneered by BOAC to win the Trans-Atlantic race between Britain and America. Everything about it yelled back at the modernity-starved populace of austerity Britain. At the time, this was progress incarnate.

Design features (that had previously been unheard of on long-haul flights) included: individual ash-trays, a bar and galley serving hot (and cold) food and drink, separate washrooms, attentive staff, high quality upholstery and impressively quiet noise levels. From the outside too, this leviathan was brazenly boasting a chromed belly that would glisten in the crystalline blues of high altitude jet streams. The engines were tucked neatly into the wing shape and despite a series of metal-fatigue related accidents, it was further developed to become a design template for other airliners. Sadly though, the business competition to build more efficient plane, meant that the Comet was rather quickly eclipsed by the Boeing 707. There is something sad about the short but glamorous life of the Comet. It represented, if only for a brief time, a template of travel etiquette that could have been ‘oh so different’.