With Atkin in Chamberlin's camp, Frost felt that his decisions were being challenged and that might have led to potentially dangerous situations with the CF-100. 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.

Generally considered a gentleman and a negotiator rather than a fierce competitor in the office politics game, Frost now felt pressure from his superiors at Avro Canada. As fellow engineer, John Conway observed, "John was a very modest man and I think very talented and certainly very cordial." (Conway, 1984) With the crash of the second CF-100 prototype and the release of production CF-100 Mk2 and 3's to the RCAF without the final modifications to the spar, the CF-100 was not really ready for use- two years after its maiden flight.

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