Pan Am Launched the First Transatlantic Jet Service
On this day · 26 October 1958
When a Boeing 707 lifted off for Paris in 1958, it shrank the Atlantic and opened the Jet Age to ordinary travelers.
On October 26, 1958, a Boeing 707 named Clipper America (registration N711PA) rolled down the runway at New York’s Idlewild Airport, bound for Paris. It was Pan American World Airways’ first scheduled jet flight across the Atlantic — and the first such service by any American airline.
The jet carried 111 passengers, including the Oscar-winning actress Greer Garson, and stopped at Gander, Newfoundland to refuel before crossing the ocean. Boeing had handed Pan Am the brand-new aircraft only days earlier, on October 17.
The 707 nearly doubled the speed and capacity of the piston-engine airliners it replaced.
Though the British de Havilland Comet had flown jet passengers first, the rugged, widely adopted 707 is the airplane usually credited with truly beginning the Jet Age. By collapsing transatlantic travel into a single comfortable day, it turned long-haul flying from a rare luxury into something millions would soon take for granted.
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