Word: comet
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Some pessimists fear that Britain's swift but short-ranged jet Comets will capture air-transport supremacy from U.S. planes. Last week, Lockheed Aircraft Corp. tried to cheer up the mourners. It showed off the first model of its "turbo-compounded" Super Constellation, a piston-type plane which will not only carry about three times as many passengers (99) as the Comet I, but cover long hauls in less elapsed time. It is the first transport, said Lockheed, which will be able to guarantee nonstop flights from New York to Europe on a regular-fare, scheduled basis...
...word announcement, Pan American World Airways this week surprised and dismayed the American aircraft industry. The announcement: Pan Am has ordered three Comet jet liners from Britain's De Havilland Co. at an estimated cost of $6,300,000, they are the first foreign planes, according to the Air Transport Association, ever ordered by a U.S. line. Pan Am, which expects to get the planes in 1956, also has an option to purchase seven more for delivery in 1957. As a warning to U.S. planemakers, Pan Am's President Juan Trippe added: the deal with De Havilland would...
...planes Pan Am is buying are not the Comets now flying on British routes, or the Comet II to be brought out next year. Pan Am's will be the Comet III, which Eastern Air Lines' Eddie Rickenbacker talked of buying (TIME, Sept. 8). The Comet III, said Trippe, will be powered by four Rolls-Royce Avon engines, and will be able to carry 58 first-class passengers (78 tourist class) at cruising speeds of 500 m.p.h. for 2,700 miles nonstop. It "will be the first jet transport," said Trippe, "able to operate efficiently over the principal...
...decided whether it will fly its Comets on Latin American or Far Eastern runs or across the Atlantic, which a Comet could do in about nine hours with one stop at Newfoundland or Ireland, four hours under present elapsed time...
...requirements for a jet plane to replace present airliners, said Rentschler, are: it must 1) carry more passengers than present liners (the Comet now carries 36 to 44 passengers compared to 58 to 75 in a Constellation), 2) be even safer and more dependable, and 3) be as cheap to operate. "In the light of these requirements," said he, "no jet transport here or abroad . . . will be available prior to 1956 except in prototype form . . . The building of a prototype transport and its translation into a production airplane so that it will be available in quantities sufficient for fleet replacement...