Jet Age

The Jet Age is a period in the history of aviation defined by the advent of aircraft powered by turbine engines, and by the social change this brought about.

Jet airliners were able to fly much higher, faster, and further than older piston‑powered propliners, making transcontinental and intercontinental travel considerably faster and easier: for example, aircraft leaving North America and crossing the Atlantic Ocean (and later, the Pacific Ocean) could now fly to their destinations non-stop, making much of the world accessible within a single day's travel for the first time. Since large jetliners could also carry more passengers than piston-powered airliners, air fares also declined (relative to inflation), so people from a greater range of social classes could afford to travel outside of their own countries.

Besides the pure jet, the turbine driven propeller engines offered improvements of the piston engine delivering a smoother ride and better fuel efficiency. One exception to jet-powered domination by large airliners was the contra-rotating turboprop design that powered the Tu-114 (first flight 1957). This airliner was able to match or even exceed the speed, capacity and range of contemporary jets; however, the use of such powerplants in large airframes was totally restricted to the military after 1976.

The introduction of the Concorde supersonic transport (SST) airliner to regular service in 1976 was expected to bring similar social changes, but the aircraft never found commercial success. After 2 1/2 decades of service, a fatal crash near Paris in July 2000 and other factors eventually caused Concorde flights to be discontinued in 2003. This was the only loss of an SST in civilian service. Only one other SST design was used in a civilian capacity, the Soviet era Tu-144, but it was soon withdrawn due to high maintenance and other issues. McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed and Boeing were three U.S. manufacturers that had originally planned to develop various SST designs since the 1960s, but these projects were eventually abandoned for various developmental, cost, and other practical reasons.

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