In 1924, Britain's four main fledgling airlines, which had by then evolved into
Instone, Handley Page, Daimler Airways (a successor to AT&T), and British Air Marine Navigation Company Limited,
merged to form Imperial Airways Limited. By 1925, Imperial Airways was providing services to Paris, Brussels, Basle,
Cologne and Zurich. Operating from the new London airport at Croydon, services were introduced during the 1920s
and 1930s to Egypt, the Arabian Gulf, India, South Africa, Singapore and West Africa. In co-operation with Qantas
Empire Airways Limited, which operated between Singapore and Australia, a service between the UK and Australia
was established in 1935. Meanwhile, a number of smaller UK air transport companies had grown up. In 1935, they
merged to form the original privately-owned British Airways Limited, which became Imperial Airways' principal UK
competitor on European routes, operating out of another new airport, Gatwick. Following a Government review, Imperial
Airways and British Airways were nationalised in 1939 to form British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).
Post-war, BOAC continued to operate longhaul services, other than routes to South America. These were flown by
British South American Airways (BSAA), which was merged back into BOAC in 1949. Continental European and domestic
flights were flown by a new airline, British European Airways (BEA). BOAC introduced services to New York in 1946,
Japan in 1948, Chicago in 1954 and the west coast of the United States in 1957. BEA developed a domestic network
to various points in the United Kingdom, including Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester. From 1946 until
1960, BOAC and BEA were the principal British operators of scheduled international passenger and cargo services
- and they preserved Britain's pioneering role in the industry.