In just under three weeks’ time, the UK will be unfurling the bunting for the coronation of its first king in 71 years, Charles III. And while his mother’s lifelong partnership with us may be well documented, aviation smarts aren’t lost on this monarch, either. The Club looks back at the former pilot’s relationship with his flag-carrying airline of choice...

For those flying during the coronation celebrations next month, the event will be streamed on board alongside a specially designed coronation menu. Plus, lounges at Heathrow will be offering Royal Warrant-approved treats and party tipples from Belvoir Farm.

The Concorde King

Sporting an injured finger from a gardening accident (“It was a damn great hammer,” he explained at the time. “The end of the finger came off.”), Prince Charles boarded a Concorde for a supersonic flight to Vienna with his then wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, in the spring of 1986. The three-day return trip from London Heathrow saw the couple tour the city, marvel at musicals in Austria’s national Burgtheater and attend a state reception. A bit of traditional British rain didn’t stop the royal couple posing with our Concorde crew for a photograph on their return.

The King’s first visit to Nigeria

In 1990, Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, made their debut in Nigeria via a British Airways Boeing 777. It wasn’t the first time the royal couple used our airline to connect with the Commonwealth, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. They flew from Gatwick, arriving in Lagos on 15 March, where they were greeted by the country’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, and his wife. Charles would go on to visit the country a further three times in 1999, 2006 and 2018, but only on this first visit would he stay on the Royal Yacht Britannia, which would be decommissioned seven years later.

High flying to Hong Kong

Prince Charles had a lot to think about on the night of 29 June 1997; after all, the next day he would be handing back Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China after 156 years of British rule. He set out on a British Airways flight to Kai Tai Airport with the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, along with a host of UK politicians and dignitaries, including the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook. Famously, the future king took to his diary (a disgruntled former employee leaked excerpts to the press) to complain that the politicians were supposedly “ensconced in First Class”, while he sat in business. “Such is the end of Empire,” he signed off. We quickly took steps to get the Club World cabin closer to First, launching the world’s first fully lie-flat beds in the cabin just three years later – practically hyper-speed for aviation innovations at the time.

HRH takes on HQ

Back in July 1998, we opened our new headquarters, Waterside, at London Heathrow. Prince Charles was the man to inaugurate it...

During the day, he mingled with various members of staff and spoke with the architect behind the project – revered Norwegian, Niels A Torp, who designed Oslo airport – all about the building’s energy-efficient conception and design, which draws from the principles of feng shui with indoor trees and streams. Ten years later, his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, would open our neighbouring Terminal 5.

A decade of departures

When Terminal 5 marked ten years of operations at London Heathrow – on 13 March 2018 – Prince Charles came by to gratefully acknowledge the work of the staff and crew. At this point, the terminal had seen some 277 million passengers head out on more than 969,000 flights. During the visit, the affable prince met everyone from air traffic control officers to Ned, a trainee sniffer cocker spaniel. He paid particular interest to the Border Force agents, discussing his interest in bio security. Finally, he took the pilot’s seat of a British Airways 787 Dreamliner aircraft, where he was shown the controls by First Officer Kate Beesley.

The Prince of Wales comes to Cardiff

Did you know that our biggest engineering base, BAMC, is in Cardiff? King Charles does – he opened the facility in 1993 and stopped by for a sustainability showcase like no other 26 years later in 2020.

The king has been an avid campaigner for the environment for almost half a century. He made his first speech on the welfare of the planet back in 1968 – seven years before the term ‘global warming’ was coined. With 400 staff present on the day, BAMC showed off investments in new, fuel-efficient aircraft and innovative plans to drive down our carbon footprint.

A king graces the cover

It’s one thing to fly on our aircraft, but it’s another to have been in the seatback, too. That’s where you would have found Prince Charles via his in-flight magazine High Life cover cameos in January 1977 and July 1982 – on the latter, photographed together with his then wife, Princess Diana. On the former, the young prince was just 28 years old – only a few months after he was voted one of the top ten best dressed men by readers. More than three decades later, he provided an exclusive, multi-page interview with Business Life, where he shared his passion for his work with The Prince’s Trust and the importance of British heritage.

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This article has been tagged BA, Destination