Rolls-Royce Dart Rolls-Royce Dart The Rolls-Royce RB.53 Dart is a long-lived British turboprop engine designed, built and manufactured by Rolls-Royce Limited. First run in 1946, it powered the first Vickers Viscount maiden flight in 1948, and in the Viscount was the first turboprop engine to enter airline service, with British European Airways (BEA), in 1950. On 29 July 1948 a flight between Northolt and Paris–Le Bourget Airport with 14 paying passengers in a Dart-powered Viscount was the first scheduled airline flight by any turbine-powered aircraft. The Dart was still in production when the last Fokker F27 Friendships and Hawker Siddeley HS 748s
Airliner 14 hours and 38 minutes with one intermediate landing. However, it was never used as a commercial airliner due to the onset of World War I. In 1915, the first airliner (for commercial use) was used by Elliot Air Service. The aircraft was a Curtiss JN 4, a small biplane which was used mainly in World War I as a trainer. Later, it was also used as a tour and familiarization flight aircraft in the early 1920s. In 1919, after World War I, the Farman F.60 Goliath, originally designed as a long-range heavy bomber, was converted for commercial use into