We recently received the following email in reference to our to our information on distilled water page on our website –
“Hi, Not that is any of my business but your description of the use of distilled water to cool the old 707 engines is not correct. I flew them for 14 years. It would be more accurate to say that the distilled water boosted the efficiency of the engines by 25% when injected into them on take-off. Without distilled water injection on a hot day that plane would fall out of the sky due to lack of power. Anyway just thought it could make your description a bit better.”
This came from Robert Smith – many thanks for your email Robert, we stand corrected on our original statement on the website that the Boeing 707 planes used to use distilled water as a coolant for their engines before take off . We’ve now amended this page on our website accordingly. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions relating to, or have your own corrections, advice, or facts about distilled water and we will post them on our blog.
Unit B, 2 Endeavour Way London, LO, SW19 8UH United Kingdom
contact@thedistilledwatercompany.com • 0845 500 5440
I worked for AIR ZIMBABWE we had 4 Boeing 707-330B’s that were fitted with water injection. This increased thrust from 18,000lbs to 19,000lbs. This allowed us to get enough fuel and paxs on board and make Gatwick without stopping for fuel, the dry aircaft could get make it.
Hello. The pictured 707 actually belongs to John Travolta, and is not a Qantas airplane. From John Travolta’s biography on IMDB:
“He owns (and is qualified to fly as second in command) a Boeing 707-138, appropriately registered N707JT, first built in 1964 for QANTAS of Australia. Recently he had the aircraft painted in its original QANTAS paint-job and took it on a worldwide promotional tour for QANTAS and, in return, was trained as a 747-400 first officer with Qantas.”
Just thought I’d mention it, in case some of your readers might get the wrong impression of who owns the airplane.