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BritishAirways PACIFIC JET

Britain Gets A New Airline

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Fifty years to the day after the first British government-sponsored airline, Imperial Airways, came into being on April 1, 1924, Britain will have a new airline, British Airways, the world’s biggest and most powerful.

Born from the merger of BOAC and British European Airways, British Airways formally takes over on April 1, 1974, when the two airlines cease to exist as separate entities.

Although during the transition period they have effectively operated as two airlines answering to the one Board, they will then operate as two divisions of the one airline.

As long ago as January 1973, Mr David Nicolson, chairman of the British Airways Board said: “The evidence clearly shows us that a unified British Airways will make more money in the coming years than its constituent parts would have done separately.”

The Board believes that there will be substantial financial benefits from increased revenues and reduced cost levels and has set itself a target that will improve the separately forecast results of the two airlines by about $2OO million in the first five years and by as much as $BO million a year thereafter.

Asked about the decision to drop the names BEA and BOAC which have built up a considerable amount of goodwill over so many years, deputy chairman of British Airways, Sir Keith Granville, said that there was certainly no doubt about the reputation the two names had earned for themselves, “but,” he added, “there is also no doubt in our minds that a greater commercial impact will flow from one common brand name to cover our services through out the whole world”. And “through out the whole world” means more

destinations than any other airline can offer—2oo in fact—in 84 coun tries with a fleet of 216 aircraft cover ing a route network of half a million miles.

A new common livery has been devised for all the 216 aircraft, and although it will probably be about three years before all the aircraft will be in the “new look,” examples of new colours have already been seen in Australia, Fiji, Honolulu and Los Angeles on one of the airlines VC 10s which will continue to operate the Pacific route.

British Airways 747 in the new livery.