Westernair de Havilland Comet 4c

Additional Information:

The de Havilland DH.106 Comet was the world’s first commercial jet airliner and was developed and manufactured by de Havilland in the United Kingdom. The Comet 1 prototype first flew in 1949 and featured an aerodynamically clean design with four de Havilland Ghost turbojet engines buried in the wings, a pressurized cabin, and large windows. For the time, it offered a relatively quiet, comfortable passenger cabin and had a promising future when it hit the market in 1952.

The Comet 4 was an improvement to the longer Comet 3 with more fuel capacity but compared to the original Comet 1, the aircraft grew by over 18 feet and now seated between 74 to 81 passengers compared to the Comet 1’s 36 to 44 seats. The Comet 4 also had a longer range, higher cruising speed, higher maximum takeoff weight, and new Avon engines with twice the thrust Comet’s original Ghost engines. The Comet 4c variant featured the wings from the Comet 4 and the 4B’s longer fuselage to accommodate up to 119 passengers in a special charter seating package. Only 28 Comet 4c’s were produced.

BOAC received two 48-seat aircraft on 30 September 1958 and they were used to initiate the first scheduled transatlantic air service.

Richard “Dick” Durand of Westernair purchased three used Comet 4c’s, a complete maintenance library and a flight simulator in 1974. This Comet 4, XA-NAS sat in the ramp south of the original 1939 terminal building for 5 years before Westernair was able to sell it.

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