History of British Airways and BOAC

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. 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.

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 1960's BOAC ordered 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. The British Airways Board was established in 1971 to control the two nationalised airline corporations, BOAC and BEA, and two much smaller regional airlines, Cambrian Airways from Cardiff and Northeast Airlines from Newcastle upon Tyne. On 31 March 1974 all four companies were dissolved to form British Airways (BA).

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.

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 Boeing 737-400 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 Jumbo Jets 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 was merged with Easyjet.

British Airways was privatised in February 1987 as part of the privatisation plan by the Conservative Government of the time. The carrier soon expanded with the acquisition of British Caledonian (BCAL) in 1987 and Gatwick-based carrier Dan-Air in 1992.

British Airways is a major cargo airline and the British Airways World Cargo is one of the leading cargo airlines. British Airways opened a World Cargo centre at Heathrow in the late 1990s. Dedicated freighter services gives British Airways World Cargo the opportunity to service destinations that are not available on their passenger route network. In 2010 it was announced that BAWC would wet lease three Boeing 747-8Faircraft from Global Supply Systems to replace the 747-400's. The replacement aircraft will be painted in full British Airways Livery.

The 24th October 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 27 years. British Airways along with Air France, operated the supersonic airliner Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde. The world's first supersonic passenger service happened in January 1976 from London Heathrow to Bahrain. Services to the eastern seaboard of the US, for which Concorde had been designed for, were inaugurated with a service to Washington Dulles airport on 24 May 1976 and with flights to New York JFK airport starting on 22 September 1977.

This was followed by a service to Singapore in cooperation with Singapore Airlines as a continuation of the flight to Bahrain. Concorde operations soon expanded with charter services inaugurated in 1982 and a service to Miami (served as a continuation of the Washington flight) beginning in March 1984. Following the Air France Concorde crash in Paris and the slump in demand for air travel after the 11 September Attacks in New York, the announcement was made on 23 April 2003, that both Air France and British Airways would cease Concorde operations. She was a beautiful aircraft. She could always be seen about 3pm over the skies of London coming into land at Heathrow with what looked like a star in is mouth, its landing light.

Now the airline is strengthening its position through taking part in alliances with major airlines. British Airways operates a second hub at London Gatwick Airport and a third hub, served through its fully owned subsidiary, BA CityFlyer, at London City Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations.

On 27 September 2007, BA announced their biggest order since 1998 by ordering 36 new long-haul aircraft. The company ordered 12 A380s with options on a further seven, and 24 Boeing 787s with 18 options for delivery between 2012 and 2016

These aircraft photographs are great reference sources if your painting 1/72 scale, 1/48 scale or 1/24 scale plastic model airplane Airfix, Tamiya, zvezda, revel, Pavala aircraft kits or you’re into flying and painting radio RC controlled model planes. There are many aviation books published about BA aircraft

www.MooreAircraft.com Tell your friends about us. Send them an e-mail