Британдық Арал Әуе Жолдарының Тарихы

British Island Airways (BIA) was the legal successor to British United Island Airways (BUIA). It commenced operations under that name in mid 1970. Ten years later it merged with Air Anglia, Air Wales and Air Westward to form Air UK, at the time the United Kingdom's biggest regional airline and its third largest scheduled operator. The first British Island Airways had its head office at Congreve House (1970–1972) and Berkeley House (1973–1979), which are respectively located in Station Road and on the high street in Redhill, Surrey. In 1982 British Island Airways was reconstituted by splitting off the charter operation Air UK had inherited from BIA at the time of its creation into a separate company. The reconstituted BIA ceased operations in 1991.

British Island Airways was the new name BUIA, the regional affiliate of British United Airways (BUA), adopted in July 1970. Following the completion of BUA's sale to Caledonian on 30 November 1970, BIA officially began its life as a legal entity in its own right the following day, 1 December 1970.

BIA's corporate headquarters was located at Redhill, Surrey. The airline's main engineering base was at Blackpool while its main operating base was at London Gatwick. Other airports that used to receive BIA's regular scheduled passenger services in the early to mid 1970s included Antwerp, Belfast, Blackpool, Dublin, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Manchester, Newcastle, Paris Orly and Southampton. Many of the services to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were operated on a seasonal basis — exceptions being year round operations linking Gatwick with Guernsey, Southampton with both Channel Islands and the Isle of Man with Blackpool and Belfast. BIA's scheduled route network was considerably enlarged in 1979 when it assumed the entire scheduled operation of British Air Ferries (BAF). All passenger services were operated with a fleet of 50 seat Handley Page Dart Herald turboprops. In addition to its Herald turboprop fleet, BIA also inherited a small number of Douglas DC 3 "Dakota" piston engined airliners from BUIA. These exclusively operated freight services until the last example's retirement on 30 May 1974. Until then, the DC 3 freighters (together with the convertible Heralds) were kept busy carrying mail and cargo, including fresh flowers from the Channel Islands to the UK mainland (principally Bournemouth and Gatwick) as well as overnight newspaper deliveries from Gatwick under contract to the Ministry of Defence to supply the UK's armed forces in Germany. In 1977, BIA applied to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to serve Dublin, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Zürich and Geneva from Gatwick on a regular, year round scheduled basis. (At that time British Airways, British Caledonian and Dan Air applied to serve these and other destinations from Gatwick on a regular scheduled basis as well.) In support of its application, BIA had proposed to begin operating these services with three 65 seater Fokker F 28 1000 series "Fellowship" jet aircraft, which it was planning to acquire second hand from Germanair, rather than the larger BAC One Eleven 500s its rivals had planned to use on their services. These had almost twice the seating capacity of the Fokker jets. BIA reckoned that this would improve its chances of being awarded these licences. 1979 also saw the adoption of BIA's second and final new livery as well as the acquisition of a dedicated charter fleet comprising four 89 seat BAC One Eleven 400s, the first jet aircraft in BIA's history. Three of these were ex Gulfair while the fourth was previously operated by the Indonesian government. (In 1979 British Caledonian granted BIA permission to prefix all flights it operated from Gatwick to Le Touquet and Rotterdam under contract to that airline with its own two letter UK airline designator (in addition to British Caledonian's BR designator).) Sabena contracted BIA to operate its London Heathrow—Antwerp route.