October 26, 2023.   707 Remembered.

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the Boeing 707’s entry into commercial service. The 707 was America’s first jet, launched by Pan Am on October 26th, 1958, between New York’s Idlewild Airport (JFK today) and Le Bourget Airport in Paris.

Debut of the 707 wasn’t as momentous or revolutionary as the 747 would be twelve years later, but it was certainly a milestone. Passengers could now fly at double the speed, and double the comfort, than they could in any propeller-driven plane.

The Brits had been first into the Jet Age with the de Havilland Comet. The Soviets then followed with the Tupolev Tu-104. But the Comet was tragically beset by a series of crashes and withdrawal from service, and the Tupolev was, well, a Tupolev. So while the 707 was actually third in line, it became by far the most successful of the new jets, quickly changing the face of air travel.

As you can see from the graphic, in 1958 an economy round-trip ticket from New York to Paris cost $489. That’s over five-thousand dollars in today’s money. The advent of jets — particularly the 747 later on — would make long-haul flying affordable to millions of people, but cheap mass travel as we know it today was still decades away.

The Boeing 737 still uses the same nose-section architecture of the 707. Those old-fashioned looking cockpit windows you see on a brand-new 737 MAX look that way for a reason: they’re a nearly 70 year-old design.