BEA property around London
 

BEA seemed to have property all around West London . I can think of their terminal in the Cromwell Road, the training centre at Heston and the head office in Ruislip. Why did they have their operations scattered around these sites and were there any others that I have not discovered? I don’t believe any are part of the current BA operation.

BEA had their own sports club as well IIRC, The Silver Wing Club(?) which was also near Ruislip, located just off the south-east corner of the A40 Polish War Memorial roundabout. I can remember going there with my uncle who was BEA during the sixties and into the early 70's prior to the merger with BOAC.

TL , I guess some were historical . Bealine House at Ruislip very convenient to where Ops started at Northolt .
West london air terminal , for pax to check in , then BEA bus to the airport ..before most had cars and well before tube / rail to LHR.

rgds condor .

The Ruislip site appears to have been in a former school and I have also discovered a uniform stores in Southall. Having the operation scattered around many different sites didn’t seem to be very efficient.

BEA social clubs in London
BEA Clubs 'back in the day':-

LHR Northside - Vanguard Club
LHR Eng Base - Pionair Club
West London Air Terminal - Comet Club
Ruislip - Trident Club

Hatton Cross club or too late in the day for the BEA days?

I guess that as a government organisation, BEA was typical of the times before the bean-counters and bonus focused upper echelons existed. Not much dual usage and possibly duplication.

Was the Trident Club the sports/entertainment club close to a river and just off the A40 ? If so it was featured on some programme a while back and I think it had become a Polish or Indian club before becoming a bit run down.

The West London Air Terminal was an imposing building, funny I was in the supermarket that occupies the site only the other day. I used to find the buses towing the luggage wagon very interesting when younger, at least moreso than the LT Routemasters. I wonder if the luggage wagons were a standard model, or made specifically for BEA and BOAC ?

Waterloo Air Terminal

And until May 1953, Kensington Air Station at 194-200 High Street Kensington

West London Air Terminal also hosted many departments in the office block above the terminal (now apartments).

As well as having my initial BEA interview there, I spent a lot of time there (post-merger) liaising with MIS on Engineering IT systems.

Agents Telephone Sales (ATS) along with Sovereign and Enterprise Holidays Telephone Sales on the 4th floor. Passenger Telephone Sales (PTS) and various ancillary depts such as Hotels/Car Hire on the 1st. Canteen and Comet Club on ground floor, or possibly in the basement, can't recall exactly.

:8 When I were a lad, spotting buses, we didn't have no anoraks, but I think those coaches with trailers were contemporary with the RT buses, before the Routemaster was introduced.
This forum is labelled "Nostalgia.":8

The luggage trailers that many remember were managed, like the buses that towed them, by London Transport, who designed them. There were two generations, they only lasted about 5 years each, the first ones were built by Marshalls of Cambridge, the same company who do a lot of aircraft overhaul work at the airport - they also have a long-established bus bodybuilding facility there. The second lot were built by Locomotors of Andover. The buses that towed them didn't last that long, they were only built in 1967 and the service ended in 1978 when the Underground opened.

BEA had scattered offices in South Ruislip, Great Central House opposite South Ruislip underground station and another office block where the Ramada hotel is, and quite possibly another site used where the Sainsburys is now on Station Approach, all close to Northolt.

BA didn't depart from Ruislip until the latter half of the 1990s.

BKS Air Transport, which later became Northeast and ultimately part of BA had their head office at Hodford House in Hounslow. It became the head office for BA Regional Division.

BEA also had a 'Social' Housing scheme for staff - My pal had a flat in Hounslow that was part of that scheme - No idea if it carried on in later years...Does it survive?

They also owned Aerad ? International Aeradio, Ltd. for charts etc.

BEA Silver Wing holidays, and Enterprise Holidays (Which BEA Airtours was the in-house airline from 1970) I think the Sales offices were in Central London?

I cannot recall when Martin Rooks Holidays was owned by BEA. Their office was in Ebury St SW.1
Queues around the block even, with Mum & Dad on Sundays when the new summer brochure and holidays were released just after Xmas each year.

International Aeradio did a lot more than charts - they ran training courses for foreign airports, fitted telephone exchanges in various places (I worked for a guy who, while with Aeradio, installed the first telephone exchange in Abu Dhabi in a mud hut!), maintained radio in aircraft and ATC etc, including providing a servicing facility for shipping ins some places in the Middle East He also did a radio training course for the Syrian Air Force, which subsequently got him in gaol in Damascus! Sometime after the course, there was a coup in Syria, and his BOAC flight to London was ordered to land when they were following the flight plan and were in Syrian air space. Everybody who had Syrian stamps in the passport were hauled off to prison: Don was lucky because the new government included people who had been on his course, so he was released pretty quickly. One of the guys in the prison was one Emil Savundra, later infamous the Fire Auto Marine insurance scandal.... for which he was a guest of Her Majesty for some time...

I think you will find that International Aeradio Ltd (IAL) was started by BOAC, perhaps even Imperial Airways, I don't know the exact date.

It became a subsidiary of British Airways, having originally been owned by BOAC to provide ground services at various staging posts across the world and, in turn, Aerad was part of IAL. Prior to that time, IAL provided. or had provided, ATS at many locations world-wide - the West Indies, Libya, West Africa, East Africa, the Far East and notably the Middle East (Bahrein, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah etc) - and also at a number of small units in the UK, then just around that time (70s and 80s) adding contracts at Liverpool, Bournemouth and Southend Airports and the Brent Field HFIS in the North Sea.

BA later sold IAL down the river to BT who conducted an asset-stripping exercise and then sold the company on to Serco, whence it became Serco-IAL. As I understand it, Bailbrook College continued successfully until Serco overstretched themselves in their bid to get their sticky paws on NATS at the time of PPP and they were obliged to sell the family silver to make up their losses.

What was 'Airways Housing' now 'a2dominion' I believe. Also had a lot of estate in Stanwell, where many street names reflect the airport connection: Frobisher Crescent, Canopus Way, Viscount Rd, Elizabethan Way, Comet Rd, Britannia Way and others.

Many thanks chaps for the replies re Aerad.

Yes, Airways Housing, that was it.

IIRC, the Comet Club was in the basement. Used to visit from time to time when I was living in West Ken.