British Airways

Waterside, the headquarters of British Airways

British Airways aircraft at London Heathrow Airport in the early 1980s.

British Airways plc (sometimes known as just "BA") is the UK's largest airline. It was formed when the UK's two government owned airlines, the British Oversea Airways Corporation and British European Airways were joined together. It operates domestic flights within the UK as well as international flights to Europe and the rest of the world. It was formed from a group of other UK airlines joining together to make a big one: British Airways (BA). BA have one of the biggest fleet of aircraft in the world operating Boeing 737, 747, 757, 767 and 777 aircraft as well as Airbus A320 family planes and regional planes such as the Embraer ERJ-145. For a time during the 1990s BA had a World Tails scheme on their planes, each tail was painted in a design to symbolise a country of the world; Botswana, Germany, Sweden and Scotland were countries represented but many more were as well.

Terminal 5

Terminal 5 in July 2006. Here, it is still being built, but now it is open.

British Airways has its own terminal at Heathrow Airport in London, England Terminal 5 or T5. It was opened on 14 March 2008 by the UK monarch Queen Elizabeth II, at a cost of £4.3 billion to build ( $6.2 billion )set between two of Heathrows runways 27L/09R and 27R/09L. covering a 260 hectare site.

British Airways has sole use of T5, other airlines that fly to or from Heathrow use one of the other four terminai. At the moment, not all British Airways' flights go to/from T5. Flights to Bangkok in Thailand, Singapore and Sydney in Australia depart from Terminal 4. British Airways intend to move these routes to Terminal 5.

Aeroplanes

British Airways Airbus A319-100 (G-EUPO)

British Airways has a fleet of 238 planes: 33 Airbus A319s, 30 Airbus A320s, 11 Airbus A321s, 33 Boeing 737s, 57 Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets, 11 Boeing 757s, 21 Boeing 767s and 24 Boeing 777s. plus 67 aeroplanes on order. 2 Airbus A318s, 19 Airbus A320s, 12 Airbus A380 "Super Jumbos", 10 Boeing 777s and 24 Boeing 787 "Dreamliners".

BA CityFlier and OpenSkies

British Airways also owns two other smaller airlines called BA CityFlier and OpenSkies, which run different services than the large airline.

BA CityFlier runs flights from London City Airport to other major cities in the UK (like Edinburgh and Glasgow) and the rest of Europe (like Nice in France, Dublin in Ireland, Frankfurt in Germany, Madrid in Spain and Zurich in Switzerland). It is a fairly new airline that only started running in March 2007. It is also very small, only running 12 British Aerospace Avroliners.

OpenSkies in an even smaller airline with only two aircraft, old Boeing 757s from the British Airways collection. At the moment, it only flies to/from Amsterdam in The Netherlands, Paris in France and New York in the USA. The two Boeing 757s has only 40 Premium Economy seats and 24 Business Class seats with no Economy Class seats.

Oneworld

British Airways aircraft in Oneworld livery.

Oneworld is a partnership between 9 airlines: American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN, Malev Hungarian Airlines, Qantas, Royal Jordanian Airlines and British Airways. It also includes these airlines' partners such as BA CityFlier (but OpenSkies is not part of oneworld).

Being part of oneworld means that the airlines sell their own tickets as well as other members, (so for example, British Airways would sell tickets for American Airlines flights). This is good for the airlines because the customers like getting their tickets in one place and it lets the airlines use flights that they wouldn't normally have. Also, oneworld has a "frequent flyer" scheme, where all the member airlines' schemes can be turned into this oneworld scheme which is recognised across all the member airlines. The three levels are Oneworld Ruby (lowest), Oneworld Sapphire (middle) and Oneworld Emerald (highest). It is up to the airlines to decide what levels are the same as their own levels.

Facts about the airline

British Airways Boeing 747-400s at London Heathrow Airport.

• British Airways was the first airline to introduce flat beds in First Class, many airlines now have this feature
• British Airways features heavily in James Bond Films
• The airline was awarded 'Airline of the Year 2006'

Other websites

• British Airways Official Site