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.
Freedoms of the air rights. From its 1962 initiation of Boeing 707 service to Idlewild (renamed JFK in 1964) flights had intermediate stops at one Middle East airport (Kuwait, Cairo, or Beirut), then two or three European airports, the last of which was always London's Heathrow, with trans-Atlantic service operating between Heathrow and JFK. This service continued well into the Boeing 747 era. Currently, Air India's North American flights are nonstop Boeing 777 service to India, with one exception, that being a revival of fifth freedom flights operating Boeing 787 service on the Newark—Heathrow—Ahmedabad route. The fifth freedom has been discussed in 2017 in