by Guy Halford-Macleod, FRAES
The UK's first scheduled air services
The first regular British air services, between Hendon on the outskirts of London and Paris's Le Bourget airfield, took place in 1919, and were operated by Air Transport and Trading (AT&T) using single-engine converted light bombers built by de Havilland. At first new airlines in Britain were expected to look after themselves, or as Winston Churchill put it: ‘Civil aviation must fly by itself.' That did not work for AT&T, but when it failed in late 1920, there were other airlines to take over its wings: Daimler Air Way, Handley Page Transport, Instone Air Line and British Marine Air Navigation. Europeans already supported their airlines through subsidies, and the British had to do so as well. In 1924 the government agreed to support the amalgamation of the four above-mentioned airlines to form Imperial Airways, the ‘chosen instrument' which was to be held up in the air by government subsidy.
The 1930s
As its name implies, Imperial Airways reached out to the empire rather than concerning itself overmuch about domestic and European services. Imperial Airways was obliged to buy British, using bespoke airliners built by Armstrong-Whitworth, de Havilland, Handley Page, and Short Brothers to pioneer routes to Africa, India, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand; and just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Imperial Airways began operating its large ‘C' Class flying boats across the Atlantic. Domestic services became viable when de Havilland started building its twin-engine DH.84 and DH.89 airliners in the early 1930s. Air services worked best when crossing water: the Channel, the Irish Sea and the seas between islands off Britain's coast. Northern and Scottish Airways covered the Scottish Inner Hebrides, whilst Highland Airways pioneered services from Inverness to Orkney and the Shetlands. Spartan Air Lines had backing from Whitehall Securities and the railway companies and operated between London and the Isle of Wight. The railway companies, which had established Railway Air Services (RAS), cooperated with Captain Gordon Olley to form Isle of Man Air Services and Great Western and Southern Air Lines, the latter's name reflecting two of Britain's four railway companies. RAS also operated in its own right, flying from London to Glasgow.
The railways participated in many new airlines, so that by the end of the decade, almost all the domestic airlines were partly or wholly owned by them: Jersey and Guernsey Airways, Great Western and Southern Air Lines, Isle of Man Air Services, Olley Air Service, Scottish Airways (formed through the merger of Highland Airways with Northern and Scottish) and Blackpool-based West Coast Air Services. Falling outside the railway net were: Allied Airways (Gandar Dower) which developed routes from Aberdeen to the Scottish Northern Isles; Lundy and Atlantic Coast Airlines flying between Barnstaple and Lundy; Portsmouth, Southsea and Isle of Wight Aviation which mounted high frequency services for the short trip between Portsmouth and Ryde; Norman Edgar's Western Airways which flew intensively between Cardiff and Weston-super-Mare and a number of air taxi and charter airlines.
Nationalisation
Imperial Airways' interest in European flying amounted to a luxurious regular service to Paris and some leisure routes to the more fashionable resorts. It faced competition not just from European airlines, Air France, Lufthansa, KLM, Sabena and Swissair, but from two home teams as well. Edward Hillman flew a low-cost service to Paris and British Continental Airways operated to Ostend, Brussels and Amsterdam. That changed when Whitehall Securities decided to amalgamate Spartan Air Lines with another of its creations, United Airways, which flew between London, Blackpool and the Isle of Man. The amalgamated airline was renamed British Airways; it then acquired Hillman Airways in December 1935 and took over British Continental Airways in August 1936. British Airways had its ambitions firmly set on developing European services and persuaded the government to grant it subsidies to fly to Germany and northern Europe as well as the existing route to Paris. Unlike Imperial Airways, British Airways was allowed to buy its airliners from abroad: Dutch Fokkers, German Junkers and American Lockheeds. Both Imperial Airways and British Airways had some interesting plans for reequipment, but as war in Europe loomed, the British government decided it would be better to have complete control of the two ‘chosen instruments' and they were subsequently nationalised, forming the new British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) on 1 April 1940.
The war years
BOAC was kept busy during the war, the more so as the Royal Air Force had only a very meagre transport element, at least until 1943 when large-scale delivery of Douglas Dakotas from the USA began. As well as helping the RAF in the Middle East and Africa, even flying supplies and personnel to the front line under fire, BOAC tried to maintain its pre-war network, gamely flying across the Atlantic, to West Africa, throughout the Middle East and on to India; flying boats flew the so-called Horseshoe Route, connecting Durban in South Africa with points north, through East Africa, Egypt, Palestine, then curving eastwards through Iraq to India. After the fall of Singapore, the air link to Australia was kept going through Karachi and Ceylon. Nearer home the all-important services to neutral countries, Ireland, Portugal and Sweden, continued throughout the war. Domestic airlines were busy too, or at least some of them. At first the government used them all under the National Air Communications scheme, but then said that was too expensive, so instead all the railway airline companies were brought together under the Associated Airways Joint Committee and continued flying, most importantly in the north of Scotland, but also to Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Scillies. Apart from the maverick Allied Airways (Gandar Dower), still flying from Aberdeen, the remaining airlines like Air Dispatch, North Eastern Airways and Wrightways, had their aircraft requisitioned and stopped flying, though many continued as Civil Repair Organisations. One new ‘airline' did emerge towards the end of the war; as the Allies advanced across Europe the RAF's newly-minted Transport Command flew scheduled services to previously occupied countries, starting first with France and Belgium, and eventually covering most of continental Europe. BOAC carried around 411,000 passengers between 1940 and 1945, the domestic airlines around 430,000.
More nationalisation 1945-51
During the war the railway companies bought out Whitehall Securities and Captain Olley's backers, giving them control over nine internal airlines. Any feelings of satisfaction over their monopoly were short-lived, however, as the new Labour government led by Clement Attlee had vowed to bring public transport ‘into public ownership', and that included both airlines and the railway companies themselves. All domestic airlines were taken over early in 1947 by the newly-formed British European Airways (BEA), which also assumed the European services flown by RAF Transport Command; international services were flown with Vickers Vikings, domestic routes with Dakotas and Rapides. BEA was not the only new state-owned corporation. A number of shipping companies had banded together after the war to start flying to South America, but this airline too was bought out by the government; the enterprise was named British South American Airways (BSAA) and flew Avro landplanes out of London's new Heathrow airport. However, problems with the new Avro Tudor airliners led to the decision in 1948 to merge BSAA with BOAC, so it was back to two corporations. In the 1950s BEA dominated European flying with its fleet of Airspeed Ambassadors and Vickers Viscounts; it also experimented with the use of helicopters for postal distribution and city centre services.
BEA's monopoly did not cover charter flights and many airlines took off once restrictions on flying were lifted on 1 January 1946. Hunting Air Transport and Airwork specialised in big contracts and flew for the government, carried British forces and their families to overseas garrisons, and operated cheap so-called colonial class flights to Central and East Africa. Skyways bought Douglas Skymasters and flew a lot for BOAC. Silver City carried cars across the Channel to France using Bristol Freighters. Aquila Airways used flying boats to reach Madeira in the Atlantic. Transair flew newspapers to Paris and the British forces in Germany. Lancashire Aircraft Corporation started by offering joyrides round Blackpool Tower, but then began flying cargo flights to Europe and the rest of the world, as did many other charter airlines. Many had their moment of glory in 1948-9 when they helped the RAF and US Air Force to keep Berlin supplied with food and fuel at the onset of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Two names emerged from their effort: Freddie Laker who used a large number of Halifax transports that he had bought from BOAC; and Harold Bamberg whose red-painted Halifax ‘Red Eagle' added a dash of colour to the drab scene.
In 1948 the Labour government eased some of the restrictions on scheduled services, to the extent that independent airlines could operate certain routes that BEA did not wish to operate. Many of these were regional services to the Channel Islands, flown at weekends: BKS from Newcastle, Cambrian Air Services from Cardiff, Channel Airways from Southend and Rochester, Dan-Air from Blackbushe and Gatwick, Derby Airways from Derby and Wolverhampton, Jersey Airlines from Exeter, Manchester, Bournemouth, Gatwick and Southampton, Lancashire Aircraft Corporation from Blackpool, Starways from Liverpool and Transair from Croydon and Gatwick.
The 1950s and 1960s
When the Tories were voted back into power in 1951, they encouraged shipping companies to invest in the independent airlines and were promised extensive government contracts, especially trooping flights to overseas garrisons, as a reward. Clan Line, later part of the British and Commonwealth Shipping, bought a half share in Hunting, and renamed the airline Hunting-Clan. Furness Withy and Blue Star Line invested in Airwork. P&O acquired a majority shareholding in Silver City and Aquila. The most glamorous take-over perhaps was by Cunard, which bought Harold Bamberg's Eagle Airlines and renamed it Cunard-Eagle, but then spoiled the show by selling out to BOAC, which for a time operated on the North Atlantic as BOAC Cunard. Bamberg then bought back the bits BOAC did not wan, and renamed the airline British Eagle. Airwork began buying up airlines in the late 1950s and early 1960s, first Transair, then Freddie Laker's two Southend airlines, Air Charter and Channel Air Bridge, before agreeing to merge with Hunting-Clan to form British United Airways (BUA) in 1960. The new airline subsequently took over Silver City and Jersey Airlines, renaming its car ferry operation British United Air Ferries and its regional airlines British United Island Airways. BEA was also in the take-over business, gradually acquiring Cambrian and BKS, the latter renamed Northeast.
British civil aviation remained in the doldrums for most of the 1950s and 1960s, with periodic crises, many involving BOAC which ran up huge deficits in the early 1960s, having bought too many planes of the wrong sort; it then had to be bailed out by the government. BUA took over the South American routes from BOAC, flying VC10s. Independent airlines had many, many crises too, but all too often they involved bankruptcies and closures, none more spectacular than that of Court Line in 1974. New areas of activity opened up for charter airlines as holidaymakers moved on from the Channel Islands and began to visit more exotic locations, especially in the Mediterranean, Spain, the Balearics, Greece, the south of France, and Italy, and later in Turkey and the islands in the Atlantic. Air Ferry, Air Safaris, Autair, Euravia, Falcon Airways, Independent Air Transport and Overseas Air Transport all catered for such traffic. A decade later airlines, such as Britannia, British Midland, Caledonian, Dan-Air, Donaldson, Laker, Lloyd International, Monarch, Transglobe and BOAC, flew further overseas as well as to Europe, to America, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong. BEA joined battle with the independents and created its own charter airline BEA Airtours in 1970.
The 1970s
Things improved in the 1970s. The government commissioned Professor Ronald Edwards of the London School of Economics to chair a government committee of inquiry into the future of air transport in Britain and his report recommended a number of changes, including an overhaul of the regulatory system under the newly-established Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the creation of a ‘second force' competitor to BOAC and BEA, which was accomplished by merging BUA and Caledonian to form British Caledonian (BCal), and the eventual merger of BOAC and BEA, which took effect in 1974 to create British Airways (BA).
The charter airlines now focussed on holiday flying (no more trooping flights) and there was an increase in vertically-integrated operations as tour operators began investing in their own airlines, such as Thomson in Britannia, Intasun in Air Europe, Owners Abroad in Air 2000 and Horizon in Orion. Freddie Laker put the world to rights by launching his cheap, no-reservation Skytrain to New York and Los Angeles in 1977. Scheduled services remained largely the demesne of British Airways and now British Caledonian, but a number of independents developed second and third level services: Aurigny in the Channel Islands, Birmingham European, British Midland from East Midlands and later Heathrow, Brymon out of Plymouth and the new London City airport, Business Air from Aberdeen, Dan-Air out of Gatwick and Manchester, Isles of Scilly Skybus, Loganair in the Scottish Northern Isles, and Skyways Coach-Air with its unique London to Paris service. After selling BUA to Caledonian, British and Commonwealth Shipping retained an interest in two of its regional airlines, British Air Ferries (successor to British United Air Ferries) and British Island Airways; it later bought Norwich-based Air Anglia, combining it with British Island Airways to form Stansted-based Air UK. British Air Ferries was later sold on and renamed British World Airways in 1993. The shipping company also retained an interest in Bristow Helicopters, by then one of the largest helicopter operators in the world. Both British Airways and British Caledonian had substantial helicopter operations, fuelled by expanding North Sea oil exploration.
Meanwhile, if they did not want to fly passengers, charter airlines could always carry freight. Anglo Cargo, Heavylift, IAS Cargo Services, Invicta, Transmeridian Air Cargo and Tradewinds flew to the Middle East and Africa. In later years airlines like Atlantic Airlines, Air Bridge Carriers, Channel Express and Emerald Airways concentrated on the courier and package businesses.
The 1980s and 1990s
In the 1980s, the Thatcher years, the main event was the privatisation of British Airways, eventually achieved in 1987. Almost the first consequence was the buying out of British Caledonian by British Airways. Indeed, independent airlines found it hard to compete against British Airways in the scheduled service field, not helped by the recession of the early 1990s. Air Europe went bust, Dan-Air was bought out by British Airways for £1, but on the plus side, Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic got going in 1984 and successfully took up the challenge of long-haul competition for British Airways, at first from Gatwick, later out of Heathrow. There was an easing of rules and regulations, especially after 1993 when new European regulations began to apply. British carriers, as European airlines, were allowed to fly anywhere within Europe, and the distinction between charter and scheduled services was scrapped. New airlines flourished, none more so than Easyjet which delivered easily accessible low-cost flights, helped along by the spread of the internet, and, with the Irish airline Ryanair, came to dominate European flying. Leisure airlines found that the inclusive tour business remained feasible, even though computer-savvy clients quickly learned to book hotels and rooms separately, which they could then travel to on the new low cost airlines. Two German tour operators, TUI and Thomas Cook, flew the bulk of holiday flights, helped by Jet2 at Leeds and for a time (before they failed) MyTravel and XL Airways. Regional routes were the prerogative of Flybe, which went a long way back to Intra Airways, Spacegrand, Jersey European and the quaintly-named British European.
In 2019, this is how the survivors looked, in terms of passengers carried: Easyjet 51 million, British Airways (which had bought British Midland in 2012) 44 million, Jet2 14 million, TUI 11 million, Thomas Cook 6 million, and Virgin Atlantic 5 million, together amounting to around 85 per cent of Britain's airline production.
Select bibliography
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Merton Jones, Tony, British Independent Airlines 1946-1976 (2000)
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Thomson, A W J, and Hunter, L C,The Nationalized Transport Industries (1973)
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