Hawker Siddeley Trident 1978, 117 Tridents had been produced. BEA's successor British Airways withdrew its Tridents by the mid-1980s. Trident services ended in China in the early 1990s. In 1953, as British European Airways (BEA) introduced the world's first turboprop-powered civil airliner – the Vickers Viscount – into passenger service, the operator was already considering what would be required of a potential successor. Following the entry into service of jet airliners in 1952, many airline managers and economists remained sceptical and advocated turboprop airliners as replacements of piston-engined airliners. In 1953, while several manufacturers across the world were investing in pure jet-powered aircraft,
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