British Airways

• 1. Introduction

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  British Airways carries a distinction that no other airline in history has matched: it was the first passenger airline to generate more than one billion US dollars on a single air route in a single year. That figure alone hints at the scale of an operation that stretches back not just to the jet age, but to the very invention of scheduled international flight. On the 25th of August 1919, a forerunner airline called Aircraft Transport and Travel launched the world's first daily international commercial air service, from London to Paris. The company that eventually grew from that flight would be shaped by wars, nationalisations, privatisations, a supersonic aircraft called Concorde, a bitter feud with Richard Branson, and a pandemic that threatened its survival. How did a government-owned corporation become one of the most recognisable airlines on earth, and what has kept it flying through every storm it has encountered?

• 2. From Five Airlines to One

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  Aircraft Transport and Travel was only the first of five airlines whose histories feed into British Airways. All five were established between 1916 and 1922, and they merged in 1924. Decades of further consolidation followed through the 1930s and 1940s, eventually producing two state-owned carriers: British Overseas Airways Corporation, formed in 1939, and British European Airways, formed in 1947. The two airlines operated in parallel for decades, but their relationship was rarely comfortable. As early as 1953, the chairman of BOAC, Miles Thomas, was pushing for a merger. The immediate trigger was a dispute over air rights through the British colony of Cyprus. BOAC accused BEA of using its subsidiary Cyprus Airways to fly routes further east than Cyprus, encroaching on BOAC's territory in the increasingly important oil regions of the Middle East. Thomas had the support of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rab Butler, but the Treasury blocked the proposal. The idea would not move forward for another two decades. It took the 1969 Edwards Report to break the deadlock. The report recommended creating a British Airways Board to oversee both airlines, along with two regional carriers: Cambrian Airways, based at Cardiff, and Northeast Airlines, based at Newcastle upon Tyne. That board was constituted on the 1st of April 1972. Two years later, on the 31st of March 1974, all four companies were formally merged into a single entity. British Airways as an airline was born.

• 3. Concorde and the Supersonic Years

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  On the 21st of January 1976, British Airways and Air France simultaneously launched passenger services on Concorde, the world's first supersonic passenger aircraft. The British service flew from London Heathrow to Bahrain. Services to the United States began on the 24th of May 1976, landing at Washington Dulles, and transatlantic flights to New York's JFK airport followed on the 22nd of September 1977. A further route was established in cooperation with Singapore Airlines, continuing the Bahrain flight onward to Singapore. Concorde gave British Airways a product no other airline could match: crossing the Atlantic in roughly half the time of a conventional jet. For decades the aircraft was both a commercial asset and a symbol of prestige, carrying heads of state and celebrities at altitudes where the curvature of the earth was visible. The aircraft's retirement came after two unconnected blows. The crash of Air France Flight 4590 in 2000, and the sharp fall in transatlantic demand following the attacks of the 11th of September 2001, together made the economics unsustainable. British Airways ceased Concorde operations in 2003, after twenty-seven years of service. The final commercial Concorde flight was BA002, which departed New York's JFK airport for London Heathrow on the 24th of October 2003.

• 4. Privatisation and Transformation

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  In 1981, the Thatcher government instructed British Airways to prepare for private ownership. Sir John King, later Lord King, was appointed chairman with a mandate to make the airline profitable. King is credited with turning the carrier into one of the most profitable airlines in the world at a time when many large competitors were struggling. In December 1983, British Airways plc was formally incorporated, with the government holding all of its shares. The airline was floated on the London Stock Exchange in February 1987, completing its transition to private ownership. In July of that same year, British Airways acquired British Caledonian, the UK's second-largest airline at the time, in a move that cemented its position at Heathrow and beyond. Further acquisitions followed: Dan-Air in 1992, which gave BA a much larger foothold at Gatwick Airport; a 49% stake in TAT European Airlines in January 1993; and the remaining 51% of TAT in 1996. A 25% stake in Qantas was purchased in 1993 as well, though that holding was sold in September 2004. The airline's advertising during this era reflected its confidence. The slogan 'the world's favourite airline' was first used in 1983, and it ran for nearly two decades before being dropped in 2001, after Lufthansa surpassed BA in passenger numbers. The musical theme that underpinned many of BA's most famous television advertisements, 'The Flower Duet' by Leo Delibes, was first used in a 1984 commercial directed by Tony Scott, in an arrangement by Howard Blake.

• 5. The Virgin Rivalry and Dirty Tricks

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  Richard Branson founded Virgin Atlantic in 1984, and BA's response to the new competitor would eventually become one of the most damaging episodes in the airline's history. The rivalry intensified through the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1993, British Airways was sued for libel by Virgin Atlantic, arising from what became known as the dirty tricks campaign. The allegations were serious: that BA had poached Virgin Atlantic customers, tampered with private files belonging to Virgin, and worked to undermine Virgin's financial reputation in the City of London. BA's management apologised unreservedly. The airline agreed to pay Virgin £110,000 in damages, £500,000 personally to Branson, and £3 million in legal costs. Lord King stepped down as chairman in 1993 and was replaced by his deputy, Colin Marshall, while Bob Ayling became chief executive. Virgin filed a separate lawsuit in the United States that same year, targeting BA's dominance of trans-Atlantic routes, but that case was thrown out in 1999. The intensity of the rivalry did not go unnoticed by the public. When BA controversially changed its aircraft liveries in 1997 under the Project Utopia scheme, replacing the Union Jack tail fin with a rotating series of international designs, Virgin Atlantic responded by painting the Union flag on the winglets of its own aircraft, accompanied by the slogan 'Britain's national flagcarrier'. Even former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made her displeasure at BA's livery change visible, famously covering the tail of a model 747 at a public event with her handkerchief.

• 6. Labour, Strikes, and the Workers Behind the Wings

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  The history of British Airways is inseparable from the history of its workforce disputes. Under Bob Ayling in 1997, cabin crew took strike action over a £1 billion cost-cutting drive. In 2005, a wildcat strike broke out not by BA's own workers but because of a dispute at Gate Gourmet, a catering contractor. Gate Gourmet's decision not to renew contracts for 670 workers, replacing them with agency staff, prompted solidarity action that is estimated to have cost British Airways £30 million and disrupted flights for around 100,000 passengers. A civil rights dispute emerged in October 2006 when BA prevented a long-serving Christian employee from wearing a necklace bearing a cross. The policy was publicly criticised by politicians including the former Home Secretary John Reid and the former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Cabin crew threatened strike action again in 2007 over proposed salary changes; that dispute was called off at the last minute but still cost the airline an estimated £80 million. The most drawn-out dispute came later, involving a group of flight attendants known as Mixed Fleet, who had joined after 2010 and were paid on less favourable terms than longer-serving colleagues. Unite described them as on poverty pay, with some sleeping in their cars between shifts because they could not afford the fuel to drive home. Industrial action began in January 2017 and continued throughout the year, becoming one of the longest running disputes in aviation history. On the 31st of October 2017, after 85 days of discontinuous strike action, Mixed Fleet accepted a new pay deal and ended the dispute.

• 7. Pandemic, Survival, and the Fleet That Vanished

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  British Airways entered 2020 with a fleet of 305 aircraft and passenger numbers approaching 48 million. The COVID-19 pandemic ended that trajectory abruptly. Passenger numbers fell to around 12 million as global air travel collapsed, and the airline received public support including a bailout equivalent to £300 million, an additional £2 billion in a state-backed loan in 2021, and funding through the UK's furlough scheme. In April 2020, the company announced plans to make up to 12,000 of its roughly 42,000 staff redundant. Cabin crew threatened industrial action in July 2020 to resist the cuts and an associated push to reduce pay. In July 2020, British Airways announced the immediate retirement of its entire 747-400 fleet, pulling forward a retirement originally planned for 2024. The airline had been one of the largest operators of the type, having flown the 747-100, 747-200, and 747-400 variants since 1969 under BOAC and then BA from 1974. As a small gesture toward history, four aircraft had already received retro liveries in 2019 to mark the centenary of airline operations: one Boeing 747-400 repainted in the original BOAC colours, two others in former British Airways liveries from the Landor and Negus and Negus eras, and an Airbus A319 in British European Airways colours, registered G-EUPJ, which was still flying. By the time those retro-liveried 747s were grounded in 2020, the airline was already planning a path toward an all-new long-haul fleet built around the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787, and a public commitment to eliminate carbon emissions by 2050.

• 8. Alliance, Merger, and the IAG Era

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  British Airways co-founded the Oneworld airline alliance in September 1998 alongside American Airlines, Canadian Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and Qantas. Oneworld began operations on the 1st of February 1999 and has since grown into the third-largest airline alliance in the world, behind SkyTeam and Star Alliance. In July 2008, British Airways announced a merger plan with Iberia, a fellow Oneworld member and Spain's flag carrier. The agreement was confirmed in April 2010, and by October 2010 a formal transatlantic cooperation arrangement between British Airways, American Airlines, and Iberia had begun operations. The merger with Iberia was completed on the 21st of January 2011, creating the International Airlines Group. At the time of the merger, British Airways held a 13.5% stake in Iberia and therefore received 55% ownership of the combined group, with Iberia's other shareholders taking the remaining 45%. IAG was registered in Madrid and described as the world's third-largest airline by annual revenue and the second-largest airline group in Europe. The alliance with American Airlines was estimated to generate £230 million in annual cost savings for BA, on top of the £330 million projected to result from the Iberia merger itself. British Airways ceased trading independently on the London Stock Exchange after 23 years as a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. In November 2011, IAG announced an agreement to acquire British Midland International from Lufthansa, completing the purchase for £172.5 million on the 30th of March 2012.