Only one Comet, an aircraft known as the world’s first jet airliner, is still flying. This vintage airplane landed at O’Hare recently, then taxied to the northeast corner of the airport and parked on the spot reserved for Air Force One. Every president since Eisenhower (also the Beatles, popes, kings, generals, and United States cabinet members) have entered Chicago by way of O’Hare’s Air Force Reserve base. Air Force One always faces east; Comet 4 XV814 faced west.
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British Royal Air Force Group Captain Roger Beazley descended the stairs and shook hands with Colonel Jon Gingrich, the base commander, and Ross Jacobs, a British-born member of the Chicago-O’Hare Rotary Club. “This aeroplane hasn’t let us down since 1958,” the pilot said, stretching his neck and shoulders after the four-hour-20-minute flight from Travis Air Force Base in California. “I wish I had shares in Kodak today,” the gray-haired officer said, looking around at the crowd of Rotary Club members and friends gathered to greet him. “After getting some of these green-suited worms off, you can all have a look inside.”
The Comet’s sleek design was once described as what a child would probably come up with in a first try at drawing a jet aircraft. This Comet carried 15 men who were nearing the end of a 21-day, round-the-world mission for the British Ministry of Defence (MOD). The crew needed to refuel somewhere in the midwest. Chicago became a pin in the flight map because some crew members had seen a videotape of a Channel 11 documentary called The First Jetliner. Producer John Davies’s 30-minute piece told the story of the airplane that revolutionized commercial flying in the 1950s, rendering the propeller plane obsolete before it too was eclipsed by bigger and faster Boeing and Douglas jets. Only 112 Comets were built. One of them has been sitting at O’Hare for 16 years.
The visitors edged through crowded aisles. Most of the plane’s seats had been removed. Duffel bags were piled high among the seats in the front of the plane. In the rear, above a half dozen spacious work stations, were two rows of radios, power packs, and related electronic gadgetry in what used to be the passengers’ storage compartments.
