Airlines are competitive and complex businesses and great airlines don’t just happen. In British Airways’ case it has been a long journey – in fact, it has been many millions of journeys of customer expectations, experiences and emotions, connected by tradition, innovation and service. From advertising to airports, from first impressions to final destination, every detail informs and shapes the customer experience and shapes those journeys. Using an incredible wealth of material from the British Airways archive, curator Paul Jarvis takes us through the decades from the 1940s to the present, exploring the evolution of advertising, interiors, on-board experience and crew uniform fashions, and how these have come together to shape not only the internationally renowned British Airways brand but the way we view commercial aviation.

Paul Jarvis was the Assistant Company Secretary at British Airways between 1992 and 2003. Retiring in 2003 he volunteered for the honorary role as curator of the British Airways Heritage Collection. The role was to safeguard and preserve the Collection as a national resource and to develop its potential as a source of heritage information and knowledge to support British Airways’ business. Paul worked for nearly 50 years in various managerial roles at British Airways since joining BOAC, a predecessor company of British Airways, as a clerk on 6 June 1966. He wrote many books about British Airways history for Amberley Publishing.