What are BA basing their centenary on??

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18 years 10 months

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*Centenary* Flypast at RIAT of the BOAC 747 & the Reds....

Current BA was founded in 1974
BOAC was founded in 1939
Imperial was founded in 1924 (& is the origin of the *Speedbird* logo)
Original BA was founded in 1935

Not finding any 1919 link...

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20 years

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They are a descendant of Air Transport and Travel who had the first regular international air transport service in the world which commenced in 1919.

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Had to look that up. Bit of a stretch...AT & T ceased ops in 1921... was taken over by Daimler Airway (BSA) & then merged into Imperial in '24.

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George Holt Thomas founded Aircraft Transport & Travel on 5 October 1916, as a subsidiary of the Aircraft Manufacturing Company, AirCo. Why he chose that date is an interesting question for which I don't have a coherent answer, but he did. Civil flying was illegal in the UK during the Great War, so the new airline company could do nothing until hostilities had finished (nothing to celebrate there), although Holt Thomas made a name for himself by having, and publishing, opinion and comment on all things aeronautical, and was the acknowledged expert on airline operations by the time they got started! AT&T's company archives were apparently destroyed in an air raid in April 1940, although the odd item has survived. Their first operational experience may well have been running the Britain-Belgium Aerial Goods Service on behalf of the British and Belgian Governments, beginning in February 1919 - there is contemporary publicity about this but little else. Their first commercial service, flying newspapers from Hendon to Portsmouth on 1 May 1919 was not a success, as they failed to avoid a hill on the way in fog - won't be celebrating that either. Early airline operations in the UK were hampered by the fact that the railways had a statutory monopoly on the carriage of most goods, including large luggage, and the airlines unsurprisingly looked for something that the railways couldn't do. There were boat-trains at the time, but the cross-channel railway experience was not a good one and aircraft could do better. AT&T flew the first scheduled, daily, passenger/freight/mail airline service between Hounslow Heath and Le Bourget on 25 August 1919 (that's what is being celebrated this year). Other airlines had flown scheduled services earlier, but mostly not daily, and more importantly, not sustained for any length of time. AT&T did keep going, astonishing many observers at the time, as did their competitors and occasional collaborators, Handley Page Transport. HPT also flew a cross-Channel service on 25 August 1919, but it was a few weeks later before they kept to a published schedule. They were joined a while later by Instone Airlines who were at least as successful.

Daimler actually come into the picture considerably before any of the above. Holt Thomas formed close links with the Farman brothers before the Great War, and took licences to produce Farman aircraft in the British Empire. He also acquired similar licences to produce the Le Rhone engine, but even as his original 'Aircraft Company' evolved into the 'Aircraft Manufacturing Company' by acquiring the assets of the Aeronautical Syndicate at Hendon, he still lacked the engineering capability to produce engines. He asked his engineering friends at Daimler (then a major producer of buses and commercial vehicles in the UK) to make the engines for him. During the war, Daimler also evolved what today we would call a management consultancy business. Although it wasn't public knowledge in the early 1920s, George Holt Thomas had been diagnosed with cancer and found running his various aeronautical interests taking an increasing toll on his strength. He turned to his friends in Daimler for management support, and AirCo was amalgamated with BSA (the Birmingham Small Arms Company, who had earlier amalgamated with Daimler) on 1 March 1920. Although it was portrayed at the time, and since, as a hostile takeover, this was far from the whole truth. It seems Holt Thomas intended to be an active partner at that point, but a combination of BSA changing their priorities and the British Government taking a particularly hard line with AirCo over the post-war Excess Profits Tax meant the picture changed rapidly, and adding in the effects of his illness, by 24 March he had found it necessary to resign. The British aviation establishment were horrified, and although he took no further active part in the airline industry, he was consulted by many and in depth almost right through until his death at the beginning of 1929. At that stage, Daimler/BSA intended to keep AT&T running come what may, as they had potentially lucrative air mail contracts. However by the end of 1920 the economic picture had significantly worsened, largely due to the French Government subsidies for the French Airlines. AT&T had been in the business from the start, and had worked their fleet hard. Many of their aircraft needed urgent replacement and the money to do this wasn't coming in. Daimler did not buy the remains of AT&T after the collapse of AirCo as is often suggested; they were already in charge, and took a conscious and deliberate decision to suspend operations until conditions were more favourable. When they resumed operations they used their own name, and bought new aircraft (the DH.34, an evolution of AT&T's earlier DH.18), but it was a resumption of operations, not a fresh start. It is also noteworthy that one of the things AT&T got wrong was to have amassed far too large a spares holding; it was this enormous stash, administered by Daimler, which largely kept the other British airlines running up until the formation of Imperial Airways in 1924.

The French subsidies I mentioned made it necessary for the British Government to reverse their original policy towards civil aviation - that it should stand alone - and match the subsidies. They also put together a string of committees to work out how to 'do it properly'. The result of that was the more-or-less happy merger of four British airlines: Daimler, HPT, Instone and British Marine Air Navigation into Imperial Airways on 1 April 1924. In corporate terms, Imperial were a curious beast. Probably most of the public at the time assumed they were a Government department, but they also had private shareholders. British Airways Ltd (BAL), formed by the merger of Hillman's Airways, United Airways and Spartan Air Lines, looked like a private company, but the Goverment had a significant, if 'quiet', interest. When Imperial displeased the Goverment by failing to modernise fast enough, they arranged for BAL to take Imperial over - with war clouds again gathering in Europe and the Far East, this merger also helped solve the minor problem that the word 'Imperial' was getting in the way in some diplomatic discussions. It was a late decision for the merged airline to be called British Overseas Airways Corporation - it might well have been British Airways at that point. Although it was supposed to take place in 1939, there were a few other priorities at the time, and the actual merger of BAL and Imperial into BOAC took place on 1 April 1940. The two companies had been collaborating closely for some time before this, and the early WW2 National Air Communications, in charge of all UK airline traffic, was their creation.

BOAC had a European division from 1945 onwards, which evolved into British European Airways, although an alternative genesis for BEA is 110 Group RAF, formed to perform communications duties across Europe around D-Day. Both versions are arguably true. In the 1940s it made operational sense to have the two separate. By the 1970s those operational differences had all but evaporated, and there were obvious synergies to be gained from a merger. The modern British Airways (which already owned the name) did indeed start operations on 1 April 1974, but traces its history back through an unbroken line to AT&T.

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As far as I am concerned only KLM and Qantas have the longest history in the world for continuous operation.

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KLM was founded on 7th October 1919, with a first commercial flight on 17th May 1920, using a leased AT&T DH-16, between Croydon and Amsterdam.

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Fairford Saturday 20th July 2019
BA deserve some credit for this obvious marketing event. They have spent money on repainting aircraft and explaining to a wide audience about its own and this counties aviation heritage.
They have done far move than the RAF did last year for its own centenary.

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The uppermost photo above shows the 747-400 to advantage.
Still a fine looking aeroplane at half the age BA wants us to think they are.

I enjoy my fairly frequent flights to LHR in their 747s, they're kept in fine shape and have updated entertainment systems. My favorite is the moving map, it's fun to sit there and watch out progress over the Canadian wilderness or Atlantic. Gives one a chance to imagine themselves being a latter-day Alcock & Brown or Lindbergh while listening to music and having a drink.
Whatever their lineage and actual birthday, well done.

Company I worked for, until it was destroyed in the collapse of Carillion, could trace its history back to the 1600s as a series of government departments.

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BOAC ran services into mainland Europe (Sweden, Portugal) from 1940 all through WWII. The fragmentation into BOAC, BA and BSAA has always puzzled me and I suspect it was partly personalities and empire building?

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BOAC and BSAA were always separate. BSAA has its origins in British Latin American Airways, founded in the months before D-Day by a group of shipping companies who could see that aeroplanes had developed to the point where their cruise business post-war would be far less profitable than it had been. They thought with their own airline they would be able to keep the revenue flowing one way or the other. The post-war Government insistence that any international traffic would be conducted by Government-owned corporations, or under licence to them, meant that BLAA (by then briefly British International Airlines, then BSAA) was no longer viable. The Government kept it separate because its operational model was very different to BOAC's, in that most of their routes had long sectors over water, so precise navigation was a greater priority than in BOAC; because BSAA were actively interested in and supporting British commercial aircraft programmes that BOAC wanted nothing to do with (Tudor and Princess particularly); and because by the time they made the decision BSAA was so close to being fully up and running that it would have been silly to throw everything into the melting pot. A rare example of common sense applied to British commercial aviation of the day.

Why BOAC and BEA were separate is far less clear-cut. Given the range of their aircraft, BOAC had traffic rights across Europe even when BEA were flying in competition, and it was generally sixth-freedom, which perhaps was not strictly necessary. BOAC were initially responsible for the Internal German Services. BEA started as BOAC's European Division, and well into BEA's formal existence the ownership of their aircraft and other assets was quite fluid, with Dakotas and other aircraft regularly being swapped with BOAC, generally as they required their annual CofA renewal. Certainly the strong 'us and them' ethic between BEA and BOAC does seem to have been instigated by BEA management, who were worried that BOAC's operations - all round the world and away for a month in extreme cases - looked more romantic and interesting than BEA's 'Back Every Afternoon' services - they did not want to lose their best pilots. They found that quite easy, as while BOAC had been an at least nominally civilian organisation throughout the war, BEA had strong roots in 110 Group RAF, with a large number of their original pilots having been given very little notice (or choice) that they were being transferred from the RAF to an airline. Personality clashes? Probably. Maybe not overt empire-building, but at least empire-preservation.

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Can a Hawk pilot please explain the benefit of flying with speedbrake out please? I can guess but would like to know for definite.

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Can a Hawk pilot please explain the benefit of flying with speedbrake out please? I can guess but would like to know for definite.

Instant acceleration when you shut it...

Much quicker than waiting for the engine to spool up...

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Can a Hawk pilot please explain the benefit of flying with speedbrake out please? I can guess but would like to know for definite.

Not really to do with instant acceleration, but, it means a higher thrust setting, creating better smoke for the Red Arrows, they use it a lot during their displays for that reason.

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Bill Ramsey, retired RAF and Red Arrow pilot, was on the Vulcan flight crew at RIAT 2015. He advises the Red Arrows fly with air brakes (speed brakes as they are known in the U.S.) extended at lower air speeds for two significant reasons. First, the aircraft can be flown at higher power settings which increase throttle responsiveness (formation flying calls for large and quick power changes). Second, the turbulence aft of the panel distributes the smoke favorably (favourably in the UK)