Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Boeing is a dominant airplane manufacturer today because its 707 used a jet engine to cut travel times in half way back in 1958.

This unprecedented contraction of space and time would have particularly profound implications for the world’s rising economic superpower, the United States. In 1847, the journey from New York to Chicago took at least three weeks by stagecoach. A decade later, the same trip by rail took three days.

Second, more efficient planes allow for new routes between smaller distant cities. If jumbo jets like the double-decker Airbus A380 were the only ones with enough fuel capacity to cross the Atlantic, then only routes with the highest traffic levels (think New York City–London and Chicago–Paris) could be sustained. New, smaller planes like the Airbu

With three stops it took 15½ hours from New York to Los Angeles, and the first London to Singapore link in 1934 took eight days with 22 layovers, including Athens, Cairo, Baghdad, Basra, Sharjah, Jodhpur, Calcutta, and Rangoon.[43] But long as it was, it was a considerable improvement on the approximately 30 days needed to travel by ship from South