The flaps deployed, the landing gear descended and the gleaming Boeing 707 touched down on New York asphalt. More precisely, according to a contemporary account, the jet “settled like a snowflake on the icy runway at Idlewild Airport.”
It was a few minutes after 4 p.m. on Jan. 25, 1959, and aviation history had just been made by American Airlines Flight 2: the first transcontinental commercial jet trip, from Los Angeles to what was then known as Idlewild, and is now known as Kennedy International Airport.
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