Jet Age

Large jetliners could carry more passengers than piston-powered airliners, which caused air fares to decline and opened international travel to a broader range of socioeconomic groups.

This airliner was able to match or even exceed the speed, capacity and range of contemporary jets, but such powerplants were only used in large airframes for military planes after 1976.

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.

[2] In the history of military aviation it began in 1944 with the introduction into service of the Arado Ar 234 reconnaissance bomber and the Messerschmitt Me 262 fighter during World War II.

In the early postwar years, the increasing use of jet aircraft had little significant impact, serving mainly to continue the slow but steady improvements in performance seen in the past.

The Bell X-1, first to break the sound barrier in level flight, was an experimental rocket-powered type, and production jets which followed it into service could fly little faster.

On March 10, 1956, it became the first aircraft to fly faster than 1,000 miles per hour, heralding an era of "fast jets" typically limited to a speed of Mach 2.2 by the engineering materials available.