55 years after the first twelve seconds
Boeing 707 707-320B shown
The jet age reaches passengers
The story
The 707 halved journey times and made crossing an ocean a matter of hours, not days. Its and engines hung on pylons below them set the shape of almost every airliner since.
Boeing paid for the prototype, the 367-80, with $16 million of its own money, and no airline had ordered it. At a hydroplane race over Lake Washington in August 1955, the test pilot rolled it upside down and back in front of the airline executives Boeing had invited to watch.
It was not the first jet airliner. The British de Havilland Comet had carried passengers from 1952 until a series of crashes caused by grounded it, and a new Comet 4 beat the 707 across the Atlantic by three weeks in October 1958. But the 707 carried more people farther, and turned the jet into the normal way to cross an ocean. For three decades 707s also served as Air Force One.
How it works
Loading the 3D model…
Specifications
- Top speed
- 1,000 km/h
- Wingspan
- 44.4 m
- Max weight
- 151,300 kg
- Ceiling
- 12,500 m
- Range
- 9,300 km
- In 12 seconds
- 3.3 km
- Power
- 4 × Pratt & Whitney JT3D turbofans, 80 kN each
Where it flew
New York to Paris, Pan Am
Idlewild, New York. Idlewild was renamed John F. Kennedy International in 1963. The simulator starts here, over today's ground and imagery of the place.
Fly it yourself
Take the Boeing 707 up in 3D, with its real weight, wing area and power.
Take off and climb to 10,000 m, where jets are most efficient.