Betting on the Comet

Britain last week decided to pin its jetliner hopes on the Comet. On the heels of a final report placing the blame for two Comet I crashes off Italy on metal fatigue, de Havilland announced that it will go ahead with construction of the Comet II and III. They will have such improvements as thicker skins, oval instead of rectangular windows, to correct the faulty design that caused the Comet I to explode in midair. De Havilland set no delivery dates, but the first plane will probably not be ready before 1957.

With Britain's air prestige at stake, the government is doing everything possible to make the new planes a success. In the House of Commons, Transport and Civil Aviation Minister John Boyd-Carpenter announced that government-owned British Overseas Airways would honor its order for twelve Comet II's and five Comet Ill's, added that BOAC might even up its order with three more Comets. The Royal Air Force will also lend a helping hand by taking the remaining five Comet I's off BOAC's hands, use them for research and development.

Even so, it is liable to be a long, hard climb. Though none of the foreign airlines, which have 26 Comet II's and Ill's on order, have canceled out, de Havilland will have to renegotiate each contract again, and it has 20 Comet II's already substantially completed in its hangars. To guard against too heavy a loss. Minister Boyd-Carpenter said that "a number of Comet II's in a modified version are being ordered for delivery to the R.A.F. . . as early as the work involved allows."

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