Flight International – 6 August 2019

34 | Flight International | 6-12 August 2019 flightglobal.com

CENTENARY

❯❯ of the world’s greatest international air-

ports to eventually sprout up a few decades

later down the road at “Heath Row”.

Today’s UK flag carrier, British Airways,

points to those pioneering services in August

1919 as the origin of its creation, which

means – somewhat controversially in some

people’s view – the airline is celebrating its

centenary this month. It is marking the anni-

versary with a series of retro-liveried aircraft.

AT&T, recognised as the UK’s first airline,

ceased operations in December 1920. Handley

Page Transport moved from Cricklewood to

Croydon in May 1921 and three years later its

route network was one of the four operations

that combined to create Imperial Airways. This

new UK national carrier was formally launched

on 1 April 1924, operating from Croydon.

RATIONALISATION

Imperial continued until the late 1930s, when

a further round of consolidation resulted in

the creation of BOAC. On 1 April 1940, BOAC

took over the operations of Imperial Airways,

as well as the UK’s short-haul carrier, British

Airways Limited, which was based not far

from Hounslow at Heston airport.

As Europe emerged from war in 1946, the

UK had three national airlines – BOAC,

which retained routes to “the Empire, Far East

and North America”, British European Air-

ways (BEA), focusing on short-haul services

and British South American Airways (BSAA)

serving Latin America and the Caribbean.

While BOAC and BSAA operated from

London’s new airport at Heathrow, BEA ini-

tially flew from Northolt, an RAF base a few

miles north. In 1949, BSAA was merged into

BOAC and the ensuing golden age of air travel

in the 1950s and 1960s saw the smartly

liveried fleets of BOAC and BEA help estab-

lish Heathrow as one of world’s premier

international gateways.

By the early 1970s, the UK government

wanted to streamline the nation’s airline land-

scape, and on 31 March 1974 BOAC and BEA

were officially dissolved as the new British

Airways (BA) launched with its iconic red,

white and blue colour scheme, designed by

creative agency Negus & Negus.

The UK carrier launched with a fleet of

some 200 aircraft, according to Cirium’s Fleets

Analyzer, and they were gradually adorned

with Negus’s distinctive scheme featuring

Union flag tails. Today, 44 years since its crea-

tion, Fleets Analyzer shows BA has a main-

line fleet of 277 aircraft and carries around 45

million passengers per year.

In 1920, AT&T’s Holt Thomas expressed

“It is increasingly unclear how

air transport will develop even

over the next 10-30 years”

Chris Tarry

Analyst, CTAIRA

Imperial continued as UK’s national carrier until creation of BOAC in April 1940

Max Kingsley-Jones/FlightGlobal

Roger Viollet/Shutterstock

Imperial Airways operated a

global network with various

aircraft such as this H.P.42

BA unveiled A319 with retrojet livery

• originally used by BEA – in March

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