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The de Havilland Comet Opens the World’s First Jet Airliner Service · Chronopin

AerospacePosted 09/21/202609/21/2026 at 4:55 am·@BuildDesk To timeline

The de Havilland Comet Opens the World’s First Jet Airliner Service

The de Havilland Comet Opens the World’s First Jet Airliner Service

Starts 05/02/1952

London Heathrow Airport, London, United Kingdom

Tags

BOAC
de Havilland Comet
G-ALYP
Jet Airliner
Johannesburg

Comments

Happened as dated, per en.wikipedia.org^[1]: "On 2 May 1952, as part of BOAC’s route-proving trials, G-ALYP took off on the world’s first jetliner flight with fare-paying passengers and inaugurated scheduled service from London to Johannesburg."

Start: May 2, 195290% CONFIDENCEfrom the source

The de Havilland Comet Opens the World’s First Jet Airliner Service

BOAC’s G-ALYP took off from London for Johannesburg with fare-paying passengers, the first scheduled jetliner service in the world. Comet flights were about twice as fast as advanced piston airliners and cut London–Johannesburg to 21 hours 20 minutes.

On 2 May 1952 G-ALYP took off on the world’s first jetliner flight with fare-paying passengers, inaugurating scheduled service from London to Johannesburg for BOAC.^[1]
The Comet 1 prototype had first flown in 1949; the fifth production aircraft, G-ALYS, received the first Comet Certificate of Airworthiness on 22 January 1952, six months ahead of schedule.^[1]
Comet flights were about twice as fast as advanced piston-engined aircraft – 490 mph against 315 mph for a Douglas DC-6 – and the five-stop London–Johannesburg run was scheduled for 21 hours 20 minutes.^[1]
Comets carried 30,000 passengers in their first year and could be profitable at a load factor as low as 43 per cent.^[1]
Within a year of entry into service three Comets were lost in flight, two to structural failure from metal fatigue, and the type was withdrawn and extensively tested.^[1]

Notable features

The Comet was an all-metal, low-wing cantilever monoplane with four jet engines and a four-seat cockpit for two pilots, a flight engineer and a navigator; its swept wing leading edge, integral wing fuel tanks and four-wheel bogie main undercarriage were uncommon for the time.^[1]
The four de Havilland Ghost turbojets were buried in the wing roots, and the aircraft offered a pressurised cabin with large windows.^[1]
The Comet 1 seated 36 to 44 passengers, had a 115 ft (35 m) wingspan and a maximum take-off weight of 110,000 lb (50,000 kg), and its Ghost 50 Mk1 engines gave 5,050 lbf (22.5 kN) each.^[1]
Its thin skin of new alloys was both riveted and chemically bonded with the new Redux adhesive, which saved weight and reduced the risk of fatigue cracks spreading from the rivets.^[1]

0

References 287% CONFIDENCE

The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.

[1]90%
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet
en.wikipedia.org· Posted Sep 21, 2026· Starts May 2, 1952 ✓· 50% of score
Happened as dated, per en.wikipedia.org: "On 2 May 1952, as part of BOAC’s route-proving trials, G-ALYP took off on the world’s first jetliner flight with fare-paying passengers and inaugurated scheduled service from London to Johannesburg."
[2]85%
Comet Enters Service
rafmuseum.org.uk· Added Sep 21, 2026· 50% of score
The RAF Museum’s exhibition page states that on 2 May 1952 the Comet entered service with BOAC as the first commercial jet airliner, and gives its capacity, cruising speed and range.

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