British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines

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BCPA logo

British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines or BCPA, was registered in New South Wales, Australia in June 1946 with headquarters in Sydney. It was formed by the governments of Australia (50%), New Zealand (30%) and the UK (20%) to pursue trans-Pacific flights. The original route was Sydney - Auckland - Fiji - Hawaii - San Francisco - Vancouver and later included Melbourne. Initially BCPA charted all flights to the Australian National Airways, which used its Douglas DC-4s. The inaugural flight departed from Sydney on the 15th September 1946. In late 1948 BCPA took delivery of the first of four Douglas DC-6 aircrafts.

After BCPA Flight 304 crashed near San Francisco on October 29, 1953, BCPA ran into financial difficulties and was liquidated in May 1954. BCPA's remaining three DC-6 aircrafts were sold to TEAL (now Air New Zealand) and its trans-Pacifc route was taken over by Qantas.