The first pair of B.E. aircraft were flown within two months of each other and had the same basic design, the work of Geoffrey de Havilland, who was at the time both the chief designer and the test pilot at the Balloon Factory. The layout of these aircraft came to be seen as conventional, but when it first appeared this was not the case. Rather, in common with the contemporary Avro 500, the B.E.2 was one of the designs which established the tractor biplane as the dominant aircraft layout for a considerable time. Following its first public appearance in early January 1912, aviation publication "Flight" commented that: "everything one could see of the machine was of singular interest".