The first DC-8 jetliner takes off from Long Beach Municipal Airport on its maiden flight, May 30, 1958. Smoke trailing from the engines at takeoff power was normal with early commercial jets, but was soon eliminated by improvements in propulsion technology. Forty years later, the DC-8 fleet had compiled a record of nearly 30 million flight hours, with 294 DC-8s still in service and adding 1,000 hours a day to the total.