Boeing 707 Douglas competition, Boeing soon realized this would not provide a viable payload, so it widened the fuselage to to allow five-abreast seating and use of the KC-135's tooling. Douglas Aircraft had launched its DC-8 with a fuselage width of . The airlines liked the extra space and six-abreast seating, so Boeing increased the 707's width again to compete, this time to . The first flight of the first-production 707-120 took place on December 20, 1957, and FAA certification followed on September 18, 1958. Both test pilots Joseph John "Tym" Tymczyszyn and James R. Gannett were awarded the first Iven C.
Boeing 707 707 would be profitable was far from certain. At the time, Boeing was making nearly all of its money from military contracts: Its last passenger transport, the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, had netted the company a $15 million loss before it was purchased by the Air Force as the KC-97 Stratofreighter. In a demonstration flight over Lake Washington outside Seattle, on August 7, 1955, test pilot Tex Johnston performed a barrel roll in the 367-80 prototype. The 132-inch (3.35 m) wide fuselage of the Dash 80 was large enough for four-abreast (two-plus-two) seating like the Stratocruiser. Answering customers' demands and under