Britain’s Airlines Volume Three: 1964 to Deregulation

The third in this series on the history of British airlines since the Second World War, this volume starts with the return of Harold Wilson in 1964, and continues through the Thatcher years to deregulation in 1992. As the government, the state-owned airline corporations and the independent airlines all jostled for position in a demanding and unforgiving world, Guy Halford-MacLeod explains how the airlines made and remade themselves, ducking and diving in a slippery and difficult ring, and records the exploits of some well-known heavyweights, Harold Bamberg, Richard Branson and, of course, Freddie Laker.

This readable book offers both structure and expert analysis of the dramatic events of the time: the collapse of Court Line; the rise and fall of Laker and his Skytrain; the protracted saga of the government’s attempts to privatise British Airways; the demise of the ‘second force’ airline, British Caledonian; and the passing from the scene of a few favourites, like Air Europe, British Eagle, BUA and Dan-Air. The book concludes with a chapter that tells what happened to the players, new and old, as they tried to adapt to the new freedoms that deregulation gave them. Guy Halford-MacLeod, a veteran of twenty-five years in the airline industry and four British airlines, now works as a researcher in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.