Nice thread, I flew ro Montpellier and back on Dan dare in 1975 4b out and 4c back as I recall. i had only previously flown on BEA Tridents or BOAc 74-707 and VC10 so was intrigued about this 'old' airliner and indeed the service. i found the cabin dated but comfortable -were they 5 across . Did not sit behind the engines either way as had been warned off the noise by friends BOAC Engineer father . Montpellier was a charming litle airport where ona nice day once checked in you could sit in pleasant well tendd garden and wait for your flight to board- security what security.
had a decent little snack on way out , return districted by seat companion who I had met canoeing on the Ardeche and took up most of my attention lol I did gallantly get the hand baggage down from the overhead -no bins just the hat rack style .
Overall though i thought it was a very smooth comfortable trip and my goodness 20 years earlier it must have seemed a different planet toa DC6 or similar. it is sad how the Uk aircraft industry changed , I dont think we in the Uk can ever handle large scale enterprises and a lot of small firms even when shoe horned into two larger ones did not have the size and economies of scale of Boeing and Douglas.
This was neatly encapsulated in a story about Boeing from the daughter of a Boeing test and development pilot , an interesting book if I remember it correctly. basically everyone in there street worked for Boeing and most of her school friends had one parent there. Anyway the story was that two senior Boeing people visited DH Hatfield to see the Comet and assess how much of a risk it was to the still developing 707. Reporting to the CEo the senior engineer was asked his opinion about the British competitor. His answer was this plane is no threat whatsoever to us, which came as a surprise . Why do you say that was the follow up isnt the plane any good? the answer was the plane is fine a practical aircraft smaller than our but with good performance pause-but they are building them in a shed and cannot build them in any numbers as a consequence. Luckily a lot of the experience survived via Concorde and the now Airbus Uk is a huge successful enterprise , except of course it isnt British . Apologies for the thread drift but I hope that there were guys who built the Comet as apprentices stayed the course to take pride in the A380 and many other Airbus wings built here and how they played a part in the seemingly impossible achievement of Europe matching and indeed overtaking USA in building airliners.