After 4 years of development, the first fight of the CF-100 took place on January 19, 1950 with Bill Waterton, the Chief Test Pilot at Glosters on loan to Avro Canada, at the controls. Before Waterton returned to England, he flew with Frost in the second seat. To the test pilot, this was a revelation, Frost was"...very much the keen English public schoolboy type. Here was another delightful contrast to England, where I was never able to find a designer with spare time enough to fly in his own creation." (Waterton, 1955) Frost was always a nervous flier right from his first flight but considered it important to get a feel for the aircraft and its systems. He even tested the CF-100's ejection seat by becoming a test subject himself. The troubles with the CF-100, however, were to weigh on Frost. The reason for Frost's flight with the test pilot on the eighth flight on March 13, 1950 was to see for himself what the extent of the flexing was like on the wing.

Early flights revealed the great potential of the aircraft but also showed the flaw in the spar was dangerous. During one flight at the Canadian International Air Show at the Canadian National Exhibition (C.N.E) in Toronto in September 1950, Waterton heard a "violent crack: a sharp thunderclap of sound clearly audible above the engine and wind noise." (Waterton, 1955) Eventually the spar was corrected by a "fix" designed by Waclaw Czerwinski, the group leader in the A.V. Roe Canada stress office. With a tremendous effort, Avro Canada solved the technical problems of the initial series of aircraft and the CF-100 Mk. 4 entered production in late 1952. The later production CF-100's were equipped with two Avro Canada designed and built Orenda engines.

The CF-100 "Canuck" became operational in April 1953 and served for 10 years as a front-line long-range, all-weather interceptor fighter in NORAD and NATO squadrons.While the Avro CF-100 was not as fast as contemporary fighters such as the North American F-86 Sabre, its good climb rate, excellent radar, twin-engined reliability and all-weather capability made it suitable for defence in the extreme conditions of the Canadian North and later in N.A.T.O. service in Europe. 692 were eventually built with 53 sold to Belgium. After a long service career, the Canuck was finally retired in 1981.

During his tenure as the Project Engineer of the CF-100, Frost had been able to take a new design powered by unproven engines and little by little, turn an experimental prototype into a successful operational interceptor. He had found a solution for a potentially catastrophic fault in the aircraft and saved the project. So much was eventually riding on the success of this fighter, for the RCAF, the company and Canada. With its acceptance as an essential element of the first-line of defence in the NORAD network of radar, interceptors and eventually missiles, the CF-100 Canuck was destined to be the only Avro Canada aircraft to go into full production, and to enter active service.

In 1952, John Frost left the Design team on the CF-100 to work on a new project that would become his passion in the years to come. With all the aviation talent assembled around him at Malton, Frost began to investigate some of his ideas on advanced aircraft designs. Looking over the activities he was undertaking during this period, one quickly realizes that John was not your usual "run of the mill" aeronautical designer but rather an original thinker who was likely to charge off in new directions, seemingly to try to find out where a strange road might lead.

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