page_title: British European Airways
section_title: Formation and early years (1946–1950)
hierarchical_section_title: British European Airways / History / Formation and early years (1946–1950)
caption_attribution_description: BEA Vickers Viking 1B G-AHPO "Venturer" at Manchester
context_page_description: British European Airways, formally British European Airways Corporation, was a British airline which existed from 1946 until 1974.
  BEA operated to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from airports around the United Kingdom. The airline was also the largest UK domestic operator, serving major British cities, including London, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast, as well as areas of the British Isles such as the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. From 1946 until 1974, BEA operated a network of internal German routes between West Berlin and West Germany as well. The company slogan was Number One in Europe.
  Formed as the British European Airways division of British Overseas Airways Corporation on 1 January 1946, BEA became a crown corporation in its own right on 1 August 1946.
  Operations commenced from Croydon and Northolt airports, with DH89A Dragon Rapides and Douglas DC-3s.
context_section_description: With the outbreak of war in September 1939 all commercial and private flying within the UK had been severely restricted by the government due to the possibility of civil flights encountering enemy aircraft. To offset this halting of civilian air traffic limited aerial services were instead carried out from 1940 onwards by the state-owned and operated British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) to a number of destinations, both European, and worldwide. On 1 January 1946, the Attlee government lifted wartime restrictions on civil flying in the United Kingdom. Within Europe, this resulted in BOAC resuming Imperial Airways' pre-war routes to continental Europe augmented by Royal Air Force Transport Command non-military flights from Croydon Airport, using Douglas Dakotas in RAF livery flown by crews in RAF uniforms, and UK domestic air services operated by the Associated Airways Joint Committee (AAJC), which had been formed of several pre-war charter companies on 27 June 1940.
  BOAC formed a British European Airways division on 1 January 1946 in anticipation of that year's Civil Aviation Act. Following its formation, BOAC's new division began taking over Transport Command's operations from 4 March 1946. On that day, it inaugurated a weekly Dakota service from Northolt to Madrid and Gibraltar, followed by additional Dakota services to Stavanger and Oslo, Copenhagen, as well as Athens via Marseille and Rome. On each of these flights, half of the Dakota's 16 seats were reserved for UK government officials. Initially, crews continued to wear BOAC uniforms. Although some services still used Croydon for some time, the main operating base moved to RAF Northolt.
  On 1 August 1946, the Civil Aviation Act 1946 was given Royal Assent and passed into law. This established BEA as a crown corporation in its own right (British European Airways Corporation) and transferred primary responsibility for scheduled air services from the UK to Europe (including the British Isles) to BEA. To fulfill its role as the new short- and medium-haul British flag carrier, BEA was organised into two divisions based at Northolt and Liverpool Speke respectively, with the former responsible for all scheduled services to the Continent and the latter for all scheduled services within the British Isles. The Civil Aviation Act 1946 furthermore provided for nationalisation of private, independent British scheduled airlines and gave BEA a legal monopoly as the sole short-haul scheduled British airline. Due to BEA's inability to take over the UK domestic flights of independent scheduled operators such as Railway Air Services, Allied Airways (Gandar Dower) and British Channel Islands Airways on 1 August, these independents continued to ply their scheduled routes under contract to BEA until they were absorbed into the corporation in 1947.
  The first flight operated by the newly constituted British European Airways Corporation departed Northolt for Marseille, Rome and Athens on the day of its formation at 8:40 am. This was followed by further route launches to Amsterdam, Brussels and Lisbon.
  Initially, BEA supplemented its ex-RAF Transport Command Dakotas with Dragon Rapides and Avro Nineteens.
  Between August and October 1946, BEA took delivery of the first 11 of an eventual 83 Vickers Viking piston-engined airliners. These were BEA's first new aircraft, which it leased from the UK government. The first Viking revenue service departed Northolt for Copenhagen on 1 September 1946. Compared with the Dakota, the Viking took 35 minutes less to reach Copenhagen from London. Following their introduction on the London–Copenhagen route, Vikings began replacing Dakotas on BEA's services to Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm, Gibraltar and Prague.
  In November 1946, BEA's first service to Northern Ireland departed Croydon for Belfast (Sydenham) via Liverpool, using an ex-Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 52/3m operated by independent airline Railway Air Services on the fledgling corporation's behalf. The following month, BEA's Belfast operations transferred to Nutts Corner while Dakotas replaced the "Jupite
caption: Vickers Viking 1B ("Admiral" class)
  G-AHPO in BEA's early bare metal finish livery at Manchester, England, in August 1952.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "150", "Image YResolution": "150", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2009:04:05 15:04:00", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3557", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "704", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "368"}