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| British Airways history starts in late 10s, although it has its current name and structure since 1976. It was in 1919 when the first British airline was established, the Aircraft Transport and Travel. The first scheduled flight was done in August 25 th 1919 and its route was Le Bourget – Honslow. The airport of Honslow was the home of the airline. Later, two other airlines were established, the Instone and the Handley Page, all of them using older modificated bombers. These companies had to face many difficulties and moreover, they had to face the competition of French airlines with lower fares. So, many airlines closed. The solution to this problem was the merger of many small airlines to one bigger. And that happened when Aircraft Transport and Travel, Handley Page Transport, Instone Airlines and British Marine Air Navigation created the Imperial Airways, the first major British carrier. Imperial Airways started flying to many close and distant places like India and Egypt. Its fleet was only 18 aircrafts and it had 250 employees.
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| Later, a route to Brisbane, Australia was added, performed with the co-operation of Qantas. Its duration was 12 days! New planes were added, like the Short S.23 C-class and the new airline was growing, together with a new carrier, the British Airways Limited, until the beginning of the Second World War I.
These two airlines merged and created the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). After the World War II, BOAC restarted its flights to most trans-atlantic routes. In addition, a new airline was created, the British European Airways (BEA), which was performing the European flights.
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It was now time for these carriers to order new, more efficient planes.BOAC ordered the Lockheed Constellation, the Boeing Stratocruiser and a version of DC-4 equipped with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. After some time, BOAC ordered its first jet plane, the De Havilland Comet and its speed reduced the duration of many trans-atlantic flights dramatically. In the early 60's it was time for BOAV to order the 707-436 with the Rolls-Royce Conway engines, until the first VC-10 from Vickers were ready for flights. By 1970, the company had received the first Boeing 747 and the growth was rapid. In 1967, a committee with Sir Ronald Edwards as president suggested that BOAC and BEA should create a united airline. That happened in 1976 when these companies worked as one and the British Airways was established. |
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In 1976, Concorde started flying with British Airways and the company had a big fleet with planes like the Boeing 747 and the Lockheed TriStar. In the early 80's, British Airways faced some serious economic problems but measures were taken and in 1987 the airline was privatized. The increasing competition from the American carriers pushed British to merge with British Caledonian and new planes, like the A320 entered its fleet.
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In addition, through this merger, British Airways started operations from the Gatwick airport. Of course, most flights depart from the airport of Heathrow, of which British Airways operates the 40% of the flights. In addition, the airline has created service stations in Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham.
The first jet planes for short-haul flights were the Boeing 737-200, of which 44 were ordered. The first plane was delivered in February 1980. Later in the 80's, new 737 were ordered. Most of them belonged to the -400 version with the larger passenger capacity. In addition, the Airbus A320 was another plane entered service with British Airways after its merger with British Caledonian, although it wasn't a choice of the company. Despite that, these planes proved to be very efficient to their duties. The medium-haul flights of that airline are being performed by a fleet of Boeing 757 and 767, all equipped with Rolls-Royce engines. A number of Boeing 767-300ER is performing long-haul flights where the big passenger capacity is not necessary. They are carrying up to 252 passengers. The long-haul routes are duty of the Boeing 747-400 and Boeing 777-200. British Airways recently decided to replace all the Boeing 737-200 with new Airbus A319 and placed order for many of them. In addition, it created a new subsidiary airline, called Go which is a low-cost airline but recently was merged with Easyjet.In addition, British Airways recently changed its logo and painted the tails of its aircraft with special colour scheme. Now most of them have been replaced with regular paint scheme. In addition, British Airways is a major cargo airline and the British Airways World Cargo is one of the leading cargo airlines. |
The airline some time ago faced economic problems, especially after the crisis in airlines which started after the attack in September 11 th 2001. Despite that, British Airways has now profits again and hopes for better economic results in the close future. October 24 th 2003 was a historic date for the airline as the Concorde made its last flight. That plane was the trademark of the airline for more than 25 years. Now the airline is strengthening its position through taking part in alliances with major airlines.
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| In 2002, 38 millions of passengers traveled with British Airways with its fleet of 237 aircraft and it seems that even more will have the pleasant of travelling with the world's favourite airline. |
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