X-Nico

16 unusual facts about British Airways


1976 Zagreb mid-air collision

The aircraft involved were British Airways Flight 476, a Hawker Siddeley Trident 3B en route from London Heathrow Airport to Yeşilköy International Airport, Istanbul, and Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 550, a Douglas DC-9-32 en route from Split Kaštela/Resnik Airport, Yugoslavia, to Cologne Bonn Airport, West Germany.

Abdulkadir Ahmed

In the early 1990s, Ahmed, bought a first class return ticket for a trip to London with members of his family from British Airways.

Albert Frost

He also served on the board of the state-owned British Airways – but was generally wary of nationalised industries, and took more persuading to lend his skills to British Leyland (BL), the strike-torn car maker.

China Airlines Flight 605

A British Airways pilot had refused to make the approach to Kai Tak runway 13 minutes before the CAL 605 Captain decided to attempt it.

Chumbe Marine Park

In particular, among the many awards it has received, the important ones are the “UNEP Global 500 Award for Environmental Achievement” and the British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow Southern Regional and Global Awards.

Chumpol NaLamlieng

He remains a director of many companies, including British Airways and SingTel.

Derek Vanlint

He worked on advertisements for such companies as British Airways, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Guinness, Kellogg's, Levi's, Maxwell House, Pepsi, and Visa.

Dixon Seeto

From 1971 to 1974, he was employed by British Airways while studying aviation in London, on a scholarship.

Léo Delibes

Delibes also composed various operas, the last of which, the lush orientalizing Lakmé (1883), contains, among many dazzling numbers, the famous coloratura showpiece known as the Légende du Paria or Bell Song ("Où va la jeune Indoue?") and The Flower Duet ("Sous le dôme épais"), a barcarolle that Patricia Rozema made famous in her film "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing" and later used by British Airways commercials.

London Rollergirls

The London Rollergirls won the British Airways Great Britons competition in Winter 2009 - providing them free tickets on BA to fly to the East coast of the US in April 2010 to train with and play some of the top leagues in the US.

Opera Babes

In addition to the "One Fine Day" track being selected as the World Cup 2002 theme by ITV, British Airways chose another of the tracks, "Lakme H2O", a "stylish re-imagining of the Flower Duet from Lakmé", for a commercial.

Rodolphe Marchais

In 1990, he became the CEO of TAT European Airlines, the biggest subsidiary of TAT Group and participated in convincing British Airways to become a shareholder of this company which was operating the first private French domestic and European network.

Roz Hanby

Roz Hanby (born 1951 in London), a former flight attendant, is notable for being the face of British Airways in their "Fly the Flag" advertising campaign over a 7-year period in the 1980s.

Tapani Koivuniemi

The company web site gives the appearance of a normal publishing company – though there is no postal address for any offices - and indeed, listed among their clients are British Airways, the Finnish taxation authority, the City of Espoo, and Kela (The Finnish social security authority).

William Herp

Herp co-founded e-Dialog a 500 person online marketing company now owned by GSI Commerce (Nasdaq: GSIC), with clients including Dell, British Airways, Avis, and CheapTickets.

WNS Global Services

WNS began operations as a captive / in-house unit of British Airways in 1996 and was known as WNS World Network Services.


Abram Games

1946, he resumed his freelance practice and worked for clients such Shell, Financial Times, Guinness, British Airways, London Transport, El Al and the United Nations.

Alex Willcock

The Nest worked with a diverse range of major clients including Selfridges, British Airways, MFI Retail, Sainsbury’s, Cadbury plc, W H Smith and Currys as well as smaller companies such as The Eden Project, Neal’s Yard Remedies and Miller Harris.

Ambidextrous organization

Companies such as Apple, General Radio, Nordstrom and British Airways have all had continued success throughout the years because of their capacity for ambidexterity.

Antigua

The island's single airport is served by several major airlines, including Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, US Airways, American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Caribbean Airlines, Air Canada, WestJet and LIAT.

Auctionair

Auctionair was founded in 2001 by Spafax founder Duncan Hilleary and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Albert Scardino as an experimental project for British Airways to provide entertaining retail opportunities to passengers.

Baltimore Municipal Airport

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill departed from "Baltimore Municipal Airport" on a 1942 British Overseas Airways Company (BOAC) flight (today it is "British Airways") after visiting President Franklin D. Roosevelt in what was at first, a secret trip to the White House in Washington, D.C. for Allied consultations shortly after America entered the War following the Japanese bombing at Pearl Harbor, on Sunday, December 7, 1941.

Boeing 747-8

Airlines including Emirates and British Airways considered ordering the 747-8 Intercontinental, but opted to purchase the Airbus A380 instead.

Bovingdon stack

An air traffic controller was blamed by a later enquiry for misdirecting traffic when he ordered a United Airlines Boeing 777 into a level of the Bovingdon Hold (or stack) already occupied by a similar British Airways plane.

Bristol Filton Airport

For many years a surplus Concorde, G-BBDG, was housed in one of the hangars and cannibalised for spares by British Airways; following the decommissioning of Concorde, it was moved to the Brooklands Museum and restored.

British Airline Pilots' Association

BEA and BOAC were united under one board in 1972 and were merged with Cambrian Airways and Northeast Airways to form British Airways in 1974.

British Airways Flight 149

British Airways Flight 149 was a flight from London Heathrow Airport to Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport, (the former international airport for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), via Kuwait City and Madras (now called Chennai) operated by British Airways Boeing 747-136.

Cathie Felstead

Felstead's commercial clients have included British Airways, Channel 4, Ballet Rambert, Fiat, Oxfam, Lynx (the anti fur trade organisation), Walker Books, Barclays Bank, the Glastonbury Festivals, Penguin Books, Radio Times, and The Body Shop.

Dirty tricks

In the United Kingdom the term "dirty tricks" became, for a while, synonymous with the British Airways campaign against rival Virgin Atlantic and the wider business interest of the airline's chairman Richard Branson.

Don Fish

One award winning television commercial for British Airways featured John Le Mesurier was produced with John Flanagan and won a Bronze Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Dov Gazit

While the British fight the German and Italian armies in the Arab Desert, Dov, and his friend, Yeri (Yerachmiel) Shrem, were sent to Eritrea, by the Israeli Air Service (Hebrew: שירות האוויר, lit: Sherut Avir, where he worked for British Airways.

Durban International Airport

On 18 June 2008, a British Airways Boeing 737-400 (operated by Comair), operating as Flight 6203 from Johannesburg, skidded off the runway at Durban International Airport while landing under adverse weather conditions.

East Fortune

It is also home to a Concorde, G-BOAA from the decommissioned British Airways fleet, which forms the centrepiece of a major exhibition about the Concorde programme.

Exxset

Since launch, products and services from brands such as Amazon, British Airways, MTN, Globacom, Guaranty Trust Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Virgin Atlantic Airways and Vodafone Ghana have been rated as either Fantastic or Frustrating.

Hatton Cross tube station

The platform tiling on the central columns features patterns derived from the British Airways Speedbird logo.

Jan Carlzon

Scandinavian Service School since went on to establish offices in all three of the Scandinavian countries as well as Finland and the training program was exported to other hospitality organizations including British Airways and Japan Airlines.

John Levene

In 1977, following his final appearance on Doctor Who, Levene gave up acting as a career to set up his own audio visual company, Genesis Communications, and has directed well over 45 audio visuals and live events for various clients including the Ford Motor Company, British Airways, KFC, Amway and Revlon.

Martín Redrado

He earned a Master's Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University, and was brought on by the Wall Street investment firm Salomon Brothers, where he served as adviser on their handling of the privatizations of British Airways, British Gas plc and the French Compagnie Financière de Suez, during the late 1980s.

NNFCC

The company undertakes consultancy for a wide range of organisations, including British Airways, INEOS, BASF, Braskem and NatureWorks.

Psychogeography

Psychogeography, as a term and a concept, now reaches more British eyes than ever before, as novelist Will Self had a column of that name which started out in the British Airways Inflight magazine and then appeared weekly in the Saturday magazine of The Independent newspaper until October 2008.

Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service

It was given to the co-pilot and to a flight attendant of British Airways flight 5390.

Towers Hall

Towers was designed by Gollins Melvin Ward & Partners Chartered Architects of London in 1963, who were also designers of much of University of Sheffield, the British Airways terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York and the Royal Military Academy building.

Walter Landor

He also designed the corporate identities for many airlines, including Alitalia, British Airways, Garuda Indonesia, Japan Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Cathay Pacific Airways, and Singapore Airlines.