De Havilland in the context of De Havilland DH.60 Moth

Hatfield is a town and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England, in the borough of Welwyn Hatfield. It had a population of 29,616 in 2001, 39,201 at the 2011 census, and 41,265 at the 2021 census. The settlement is of Saxon origin. Hatfield House, home of the Marquess of Salisbury, forms the nucleus of the old town. From the 1930s when de Havilland opened a factory, until the 1990s when British Aerospace closed it, aircraft design and manufacture employed more people there than any other industry. Hatfield was one of the post-war New Towns built around London and has much modernist architecture from the period. The University of Hertfordshire is based there.

Hatfield lies 20 miles (30 kilometres) north of London beside the A1(M) motorway and has direct trains to London King's Cross railway station, London St Pancras railway station, Finsbury Park and Moorgate. There has been a strong increase in commuters who work in London moving into the area.

The de Havilland DH.106 Comet is a four-engine narrow body aircraft developed and manufactured by de Havilland in the United Kingdom. The world's first commercial jet airliner, the Comet 1 prototype first flew in 1949. It features an aerodynamically clean design with four de Havilland Ghost turbojet engines located in the wing roots, a pressurised cabin, and large windows. For the era, it offered a relatively quiet, comfortable passenger cabin and was commercially promising at its debut in 1952.

Within a year of the airliner's entry into service, three Comets were lost in highly publicised accidents after suffering catastrophic mishaps mid-flight. Two of these were found to be caused by structural failure resulting from metal fatigue in the airframe, a phenomenon not fully understood at the time; the other was due to overstressing of the airframe during flight through severe weather. The Comet was withdrawn from service and extensively tested. Design and construction flaws, including dangerous stress concentrations around square cut-outs for the ADF (automatic direction finder) antennas were ultimately identified. As a result, the Comet was extensively redesigned, with structural reinforcements and other changes. Rival manufacturers heeded the lessons learned from the Comet when developing their own aircraft.

The de Havilland DH.87 Hornet Moth is a single-engined cabin biplane designed by the de Havilland Aircraft Company in 1934 as a potential replacement for its highly successful de Havilland Tiger Moth trainer. Although its side-by-side two-seat cabin made it closer in configuration to the modern aircraft that military trainee pilots would later fly, there was no interest from the RAF and the aircraft was put into production for private buyers.

BAE Systems plc is a British multinational aerospace, arms and information security company, based in London. It is the largest manufacturer in Britain as of 2017. It is the largest defence contractor in Europe and the seventh largest in the world based on applicable 2021 revenues. Its largest operations are in the United Kingdom and in the United States, where its BAE Systems Inc. subsidiary is one of the six largest suppliers to the US Department of Defense. Its next biggest markets are Saudi Arabia, then Australia; other major markets include Canada, Japan, India, Turkey, Qatar, Oman and Sweden. The company was formed on 30 November 1999 by the £7.7 billion purchase of and merger of Marconi Electronic Systems (MES), the defence electronics and naval shipbuilding subsidiary of the General Electric Company plc (GEC), with British Aerospace, an aircraft, munitions and naval systems manufacturer.

BAE Systems is the successor to various aircraft, shipbuilding, armoured vehicle, armaments and defence electronics companies, including the Marconi Company, the first commercial company devoted to the development and use of radio; A.V. Roe and Company, one of the world's first aircraft companies; de Havilland, manufacturer of the Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner; Hawker Siddeley, manufacturer of the Harrier, the world's first VTOL attack aircraft; British Aircraft Corporation, co-manufacturer of the Concorde supersonic transport; Supermarine, manufacturer of the Spitfire; Yarrow Shipbuilders, builder of the Royal Navy's first destroyers; Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, builder of the world's first battlecruiser; and Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering, builder of the Royal Navy's first submarines.

The Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle is a rear-engine narrow-body jet airliner produced by French Sud Aviation.It was developed by SNCASE in the early 1950s, and made its maiden flight on May 27, 1955. It included some de Havilland designs and components developed for the de Havilland Comet, the first jet airliner. SNCASE merged into the larger Sud Aviation conglomerate before the aircraft entered revenue service on April 26, 1959, with Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS); 282 were built until production ended in 1972. It was ordered by airlines on every continent and operated until its retirement in 2005.

The short-range, five-abreast airliner is powered by two aft-mounted Rolls-Royce Avon turbojet engines, allowing a clean low wing.The configuration was later retained in many narrow-body aircraft and regional jets.The initial I, III and VI variants could seat 90 to 99 passengers over 1,650 to 2,500 kilometres (1,030 to 1,550 mi; 890 to 1,350 nmi).The later, slightly longer 10/11 variants could seat 99 to 118 passengers over 2,800 to 3,300 kilometres (1,700 to 2,100 mi; 1,500 to 1,800 nmi) and were powered by Pratt & Whitney JT8D low-bypass turbofans.The stretched Caravelle 12 could seat 131 over 3,200 kilometres (2,000 mi; 1,700 nmi).

The University of Hertfordshire (UH) is a university in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. The university is based largely in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Its antecedent institution, Hatfield Technical College, was founded in 1948 and was identified as one of 25 Colleges of Technology in the United Kingdom in 1959. In 1992, Hatfield Polytechnic was granted university status by the British government and subsequently renamed University of Hertfordshire. It is one of the post-1992 universities.

Hertfordshire is mainly based at two campuses – College Lane and de Havilland. The university has 9 schools: Hertfordshire Business School, Computer Science, Creative Arts, Education, Health and Social Work, Humanities (which oversees its computer-assisted training system, or CATS programme), Hertfordshire Law School, Life and Medical Sciences, Physics, Engineering and Computer Science and Hertfordshire Higher Education Consortium.