Everything about British Airways Ltd totally explained
This article deals with the 1930s airline British Airways Ltd. For the modern airline of similar name see British Airways.
British Airways Ltd was a private airline company operating in Europe formed in 1935. First called
Allied British Airways, it was formed in October,
1935 by the merger of
Spartan Air Lines and
United Airways (no relation to the US carrier
United Airlines). It rapidly acquired
Hillman's Airways, adopted its definitive name, and transferred its UK base to
Heston (
Gatwick wasn't ready). Its corporate emblem was a winged lion.
Initially equipped with a mixture of aircraft including the
DH84,
DH86A and
Spartan Cruisers, the competitive nature of European aviation forced it to look to importing modern aircraft from overseas to maintain its position. Acquiring the Dutch-built
Fokker F.XII and German
Junkers Ju 52 planes, it rapidly established services to
Paris,
Lille,
Cologne,
Amsterdam,
Hanover,
Hamburg,
Copenhagen,
Malmö and
Stockholm.
It later bought the new all-metal American
Lockheed L-10 Electra and extended its routes to
Hungary and
Poland. Under contract to the Air Ministry, a survey flight was made to Bathurst WA in order to open up a south Atlantic service. A service to
Lisbon was started in May 1939; a problem was that
Franco wouldn't grant landing rights at
Madrid.
British Airways Ltd wasn't intended to compete with
Imperial Airways which flew to far-flung parts of the
British Empire, enjoyed state subsidy, and used British-built aircraft, often antiquated. Shortly after the outbreak of
World War II, Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd were merged into a single state-owned national carrier -
British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). British Airways had built up a reputation for efficiency in its short life.
Perhaps British Airways Limited's best-remembered action was that it was on one of the airline's Lockheeds that
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to meet
Adolf Hitler for the discussions that concluded with the
Munich Agreement. Photographs of Chamberlain emerging from his plane at Heston clearly display the "British Airways" logo around the aircraft door.
The
British Airways name was to re-appear 35 years later when BOAC was re-merged with its
1946 spin-off,
British European Airways.
Further Information
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