The Indefatigable Drive

With something like the grudging irritation that Queen Isabella's customs men must have felt when they waved Columbus into the black Atlantic, New York's kingly Port Authority last week granted limited permission to two airlines to operate commercial jet transports from Idlewild Airport. Within hours, the British Overseas Airways Corp. had hurriedly rounded up twelve paying passengers and

19 freeloaders, stuffed them breathlessly aboard a jet Comet IV, was off from London with a roar, landing at Idlewild, after breasting headwinds, in ten hours,

20 minutes. Soon after that Comet took off, another (five paying passengers, 23 freeloaders), charged off Idlewild's runway, made London in a snappy six hours, twelve minutes, some five hours less than normal piston flight. Thus, on the anniversary of Russia's Sputnik, began a new era in the 20th century's fast-changing history. The commercial jet age was a dramatic reality.

Not far behind BOAC was Pan American World Airways, whose Boeing 707 was cleared for operation at Idlewild, but was still undergoing testing at London Airport. Racing one another, as the old Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads had once muscled each other in their drive to roll back the Western frontiers, Pan Am and BOAC had each charged into jet transport head on, in determination to be first across the Atlantic. Pan Am's consolation: soon the U.S. line will be flying transatlantic jets daily, while BOAC will run once a week until it receives shipment of new planes.

But the who's-first rivalry was really just prologue. By New Year's major U.S. airlines will be flying timetable jet trips from New York to California. San Francisco, once no days away from New York by sailing packet, 2 1/2 days away by rail and eight hours by nonstop piston transport, will move to a short distance of 4 1/2 hours. The 49th state of Alaska will be closer to Washington--nine hours or so--than was the capital of Delaware in 1800.

Of itself, the jet transport age would not do much to solve the world's problems (military jets are already old hat), except, possibly, to put Secretary of State John Foster Dulles more places more often. But its advent was another milestone in the oldest and most adventurous struggle of all: man's indefatigable drive to conquer his own environment.

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