December 16th, 2009 by Susan Renolds

Not every airline can boast a history like British Airways’. This airline’s history is so storied, in fact, the British Airways Archive and Museum Collection, established at the company’s inceptions, preserves the history of British Airways and its predecessor companies. Read on for highlights:

On 25 August’19 Aircraft Transport and Travel Limited, a company forerunner, launched the first daily scheduled international flight from London to Paris. The plane, a single-engine de Havilland DH4A biplane took off from Hundslow Heath, not far from today’s Heathrow International. Two-and- a-half hours later, the plane landed in Le Bourget, delivering its one passenger and cargo of newspapers, Devonshire cream and grouse. Soon after, two other airways began flights to Paris and Brussels. In these pioneering days, companies struggled with few passengers, high fares and less-than-predictable flights.

Just five years later, Britain’s four fledgling airlines merged to form Imperial Airways Limited. Passengers’ international flight choices included Paris, Brussels, Basle, Cologne and Zurich. Over the next 10 years, flights to India, the Arabian Gulf, Egypt, South Africa, Singapore, West Africa and Australia were introduced along with the addition of the Croydon airport. In’35, several smaller air transport companies merged to form British Airways Limited operating out of Gatwick airport. British Airways Limited became Imperial Airways Limited’s main UK competitor for European flights. In response to a governmental review, the two airlines were nationalized in’39 to form British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).  Read more...