British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines
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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.
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