British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines

British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines or BCPA, was registered in New South Wales, Australia in June 1946 with headquarters in Sydney. It was formed by the governments of Australia (50%), New Zealand (30%) and the UK (20%) to pursue trans-Pacific flights. The original route was Sydney - Auckland - Fiji - Canton Island - Hawaii - San Francisco - Vancouver and later included Melbourne. Initially BCPA charted all flights to the Australian National Airways, which used its Douglas DC-4s. The inaugural flight departed from Sydney on the 15th September 1946. In late 1948 BCPA took delivery of the first of four Douglas DC-6B aircraft. Naming of aircraft was common in those years and the four were christened RESOLUTION, ENDEAVOUR, ADVENTURE & DISCOVERY, in honor of the ships of Captain Cook, famous British explorer !

After BCPA Flight 304 RESOLUTION , VH-BPE crashed near San Francisco on October 29, 1953, BCPA ran into financial difficulties and was liquidated in May 1954. Books were not completely closed until 1964 because of on-going legalities with the William Kapell family, suing the airline , to no avail, for loss of future revenue he would have genenerated had he not died. BCPA's remaining three DC-6B aircraft were sold to TEAL (now Air New Zealand)Those three were sold off and two were destroyed in air crashes while the third , a former fire bomber, langors in the Arizona,USA, desert to this day. BCPA's trans-Pacifc route was taken over by QANTAS.

* [http://beta.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/treaties/1947/5.html Australian Business Records]

reference/source : flightoftheresolution.org