Everything about Jet Airliner totally explained
For the Steve Miller Band/Arthur Pena song, see Jet Airliner (song)
A
jet airliner is a passenger
airplane (passenger
aeroplane) that's powered by
jet engines.
In contrast to today's long-distance quiet, fuel-efficient, and modern turbofan powered air travel, first generation jet airliner travel was noisy and fuel inefficient. These inefficiencies were addressed by the
jetprop, also known as the turboprop.
Although the fleets of many modern airlines may include a number of smaller but just as modern
turboprop and seemingly ancient
propeller propelled and
reciprocating piston driven types, these appearances can be deceiving. These types of
gas turbine,
propjet airliners are just as modern as turbofan driven aircraft, and are typically used for shorter flights to provincial towns, island communities, or airports where topography or adjoining development limits the runway length.
Introduction and early history
The first airliners with
turbojet propulsion were experimental conversions of the
Avro Lancastrian piston engined airliner, which were flown with several types of early jet engine, including the
de Havilland Ghost and the
Rolls-Royce Nene, however these retained the two inboard piston engines, the jets being housed in the outboard nacelles and these aircraft were therefore of 'mixed' propulsion. The first airliner with full jet power was the Nene-powered
Vickers VC.1 Viking G-AJPH, which first flew on the
6 April 1948.
First commercially successful jet airliner
The first purpose-built jet airliner was the
de Havilland Comet which first flew in 1949 and entered service in 1952. Also developed in 1949 was the
Avro Jetliner, and although it never reached production, the term jetliner caught on as a generic term for all passenger jet aircraft.
These first jet airliners were followed some years later by the
Boeing 707 and
Douglas DC-8, the
Sud Aviation Caravelle,
Tupolev Tu-104, and
Convair 880. National prestige was attached to developing prototypes and bringing these first generation designs into service. There was also a strong
nationalism in purchasing policy, such that the
Boeing and
Douglas products became closely associated with
Pan Am, while
BOAC ordered
British made Comets.
These two
airlines with strong nautical traditions of
command hierarchy rank and
chain of command, retained from their days of operations with
flying boats, undoubtably were quick to
capitalize upon, with the help of
advertising agencies, the linkings of the "speed of jets" with the safety and secure "luxury of
ocean liners" among
public perception.
Aeroflot used Russian
Tupolevs, while
Air France introduced French
Caravelles. Commercial realities dictated exceptions, however, as few airlines could risk missing out on a superior product: American airlines ordered the pioneering Comet (but later cancelled when the Comet ran into
fatigue problems), Canadian, British and European airlines couldn't ignore the better operating economics of the Boeing 707 and the DC-8, while some American airlines ordered the Caravelle.
Boeing became the most successful of the early manufacturers. The
KC-135 Stratotanker and military versions of the 707 remain operational, mostly as
tankers or
freighters. The basic configuration of the Boeing,
Convair and Douglas aircraft jet airliner designs, with widely spaced podded engines under slung on pylons beneath a swept wing, proved to be the most common arrangement and was most easily compatible with the large-diameter high-bypass turbofan engines that subsequently prevailed for reasons of quietness and fuel efficiency.
The
de Havilland and
Tupolev designs had engines incorporated within the wings next to the
fuselage, a concept that endured only within military designs while the Caravelle pioneered engines mounted either side of the rear fuselage.
Second generation jet airliner developments
In the 1960s, when jet airliners were powered by slim, low-bypass engines, many aircraft used the rear-engined,
T-tail configuration, such as the
Boeing 727,
Douglas DC-9,
BAC One-Eleven,
Hawker Siddeley Trident,
Ilyushin Il-62,
Tupolev Tu-154 and
Vickers VC-10. This engine arrangement survives into the
21st century on numerous
Douglas DC-9 derivatives plus newer short-range regional "jet airliners" built by
Bombardier,
Embraer and, until recently,
Fokker. However other "jetliner" developments, such as the concept of rocket assisted takeoffs
RATO, and the briefly mentioned
water-injection as used and tested upon first generation
passenger jets, as well as trailing edge mounted powerplants,
afterburners also known as
reheat used upon
supersonic jetliners
SSTs such as the
Concorde and
Tupolev Tu-144, likewise have been relegated to the past.
For
business jets, the rear-engined universal configuration pioneered by the turbojet powered early
Learjet 23,
North American Sabreliner, and
Lockheed JetStar is common practice on smaller
bizjet aircraft as the wing is too close to the ground to accommodate underslung engines. This is as opposed to early generation jet airliners, whose design engineers slung jet engines on the rear to increase wing
lift performance and at the same time reduce cabin noise of the lower bypass "
turbojet" engines.
Present day jet airliners
Airliners descriptions are commonly broken down into the distinction of "
jumbo" and,"
wide-body" jets, "
narrow-body" jets, and "
regional jets" with the terms "jets" and "liners" dropped from all but the "regional" and "jumbo jets."
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