- British Airways Ltd.
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 andUnited Airways (no relation to the US carrierUnited Airlines ). It rapidly acquiredHillman's Airways , adopted its definitive name, and transferred its UK base to Heston (Gatwick was not ready). Its corporate emblem was a winged lion.Initially equipped with a mixture of aircraft including the DH84, DH86A and
Spartan Cruiser s, the competitive nature of European aviation forced it to look to importing modern aircraft from overseas to maintain its position. Acquiring the Dutch-builtFokker F.XII and GermanJunkers Ju 52 planes, it rapidly established services toParis ,Lille ,Cologne ,Amsterdam ,Hanover ,Hamburg ,Copenhagen ,Malmö andStockholm .It later bought the new all-metal American
Lockheed L-10 Electra and extended its routes toHungary andPoland . 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 toLisbon was started in May 1939; a problem was thatFranco would not grant landing rights atMadrid .British Airways Ltd was not intended to compete with
Imperial Airways which flew to far-flung parts of theBritish Empire , enjoyed state subsidy, and used British-built aircraft, often antiquated. Shortly after the outbreak ofWorld 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 meetAdolf Hitler for the discussions that concluded with theMunich 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 .
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