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Sir Henry Ernest Marking (11 March 1920 - 16 May 2002) KCVO [1] CBE was a British businessman and a former chairman and chief executive of British European Airways (BEA), which became British Airways. [2] [3]
He was the son of a butcher, born in Saffron Walden in Essex. He attended Saffron Walden Grammar School.
He was an army officer in the Second World War, being awarded the Military Cross (MC) in 1944 for conduct in the Battle of Anzio in February 1944. He served in North Africa, Italy and the Middle East (Egypt) with the Second Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters. He was an intelligence officer.
In September 1944 he studied for a year at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (MECAS), where he learnt Arabic. He then went to University College London (UCL) to read Law, having started in 1938.
He joined British European Airways in the legal department, becoming company secretary in October 1950. He became chief executive on 1 April 1964. In the 1950s he joined a government committee on customs law. He became involved with the Institute of Transport (now the CILT) as a consultant on aviation law and the Royal Aeronautical Society, where he planned its first air transport course in 1956. [4] He became chairman of BEA on 1 January 1971.
Under his leadership, British Airtours began in 1969 as BEA Airtours, taking its first commercial flight on 6 March 1970 from Gatwick Airport. He became chairman on 1 January 1971. In April 1971, BEA was restructured into ten separate operating units. Later in 1971 he was involved with the new Airbus A300, as a possible replacement for BEA's main Hawker Siddeley Trident fleet.
On 2 May 1969, the Edwards Committee (led by Sir Ronald Edwards) had been published, which recommended that BEA merged with BOAC, which the government made a decision to proceed with in May 1972; the British Airways Group was formed on 1 September 1972, becoming the fully-fledged British Airways in April 1974.
He was on the board of British Airways from 1971-80. In January 1977 British Airways adopted a single functional structure. He left British Airways at the end of August 1977, at the age of 57, having spent 28 years in the airline industry.
On 4 August 1977 he was named as the Chairman of the British Tourist Authority (BTA) to take over on 1 September 1977 (since 2003 called VisitBritain); [5] on his appointment he said I want visitors to see something other than London, the real Britain does not lie in the metropolis. Knowing the west of Essex well, he campaigned against the building of Stansted Airport.
He was awarded the CBE in the 1969 Birthday Honours, and the knighted in the 1978 New Year Honours.
He died in 2002 aged 82. He never married. He lived to the west of the M11 in Uttlesford. [3]
Saffron Walden is a market town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England, 12 miles (19 km) north of Bishop's Stortford, 15 miles (24 km) south of Cambridge and 43 miles (69 km) north of London. It retains a rural appearance and some buildings of the medieval period. The population was 15,504 at the 2011 census.
British European Airways (BEA), formally British European Airways Corporation, was a British airline which existed from 1946 until 1974.
Alan Gordon Barraclough Haselhurst, Baron Haselhurst, Kt. is a British Conservative politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Saffron Walden from 1977 to 2017, having previously represented Middleton and Prestwich from 1970 to 1974. Haselhurst was Chairman of Ways and Means from 14 May 1997 to 8 June 2010, and later Chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association between 2011 and 2014. He was the oldest Conservative MP when he stood down at the 2017 general election. In May 2018, he was appointed as a life peer, and currently sits in the House of Lords as Baron Haselhurst.
Caledonian Airways was a wholly private, independent Scottish charter airline formed in April 1961. It began with a single 104-seat Douglas DC-7C leased from Sabena. Caledonian grew rapidly over the coming years to become the leading transatlantic "affinity group" charter operator by the end of the decade. During that period, passenger numbers grew from just 8,000 in 1961 to 800,000 in 1970. The latter represented 22.7% of all British non-scheduled passengers. It also became Britain's most consistently profitable and financially most secure independent airline of its era, never failing to make a profit in all its ten years of existence. By the end of 1970, Caledonian operated an all-jet fleet consisting of eleven aircraft and provided employment for over 1,000 workers. At that time, its principal activities included group charters between North America, Europe and the Far East using Boeing 707s, and general charter and inclusive tour (IT) activities in Europe utilising One-Elevens. This was also the time Caledonian merged with British United Airways (BUA), the largest contemporary independent airline and leading private sector scheduled carrier in the United Kingdom, and formed British Caledonian.
British Airtours was a British charter airline with flight operations out of London Gatwick and Manchester Airports.
Matthew Evans, Baron Evans of Temple Guiting, was a British Labour Party politician. Evans' father was the writer George Ewart Evans.
Denis Tunnicliffe, Baron Tunnicliffe, is a British pilot and railwayman. He is a Labour Life Peer, who has had several roles in the House of Lords ranging from a Government Whip to a Defence Spokesman. He is currently the Opposition Deputy Chief Whip.
The Saffron Building Society is a regional building society which has branches and agencies in the East of England. These span: Essex, Hertfordshire and Suffolk. It is a member of the Building Societies Association.
Sir Maurice Flanagan was a British businessman, the founding CEO of Emirates and executive vice-chairman of The Emirates Group.
Saffron Walden Free Grammar School was a school in the Essex town of Saffron Walden, which for over four hundred years educated the boys of the town and surrounding villages in a manner designed to be after the model of Eton College and Winchester. It was notable for its longevity and for some of its illustrious alumni.
Sir Archibald Russell, CBE, FRS was a British aerospace engineer who worked most of his career at the Bristol Aeroplane Company, before becoming managing director of the Filton Division when Bristol merged into British Aircraft Corporation in 1960. He also served as the vice-chairman of the BAC-Sud Aviation Concorde Committee that produced the Concorde, working alongside Morien Morgan. His designs include the Blenheim, Britannia, Type 188 and many others. He was known throughout his career as a perfectionist, as well as his criticism for those who did not measure up – criticisms that included ministers, civil servants, the Brabazon Committee and BOAC.
British Airways (BA), the United Kingdom's national airline, was formed in 1974 with the merger of the two largest UK airlines, British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA), and including also two smaller regional airlines, Cambrian Airways and Northeast Airlines. The merger was the completion of a consolidation process started in 1971 with the establishment of the British Airways Board, a body created by the British government to control the operations and finances of BOAC and BEA, which initially continued to exist as separate entities.
Sir Giles Connop McEachern Guthrie, 2nd Baronet, was an English aviator, merchant banker and later, an airline industry executive, serving as the chairman and chief executive of the state owned airline British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).
British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) was the British state-owned airline created in 1939 by the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. It continued operating overseas services throughout World War II. After the passing of the Civil Aviation Act 1946, European and South American services passed to two further state-owned airlines, British European Airways (BEA) and British South American Airways (BSAA). BOAC absorbed BSAA in 1949, but BEA continued to operate British domestic and European routes for the next quarter century. A 1971 Act of Parliament merged BOAC and BEA, effective 31 March 1974, forming today's British Airways. For most of its history its main rival was Pan Am.
Sir Basil Smallpeice, was an English accountant and businessman, who served as a director of several companies, including the state owned airline British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), the shipping company Cunard and the mining based conglomerate Lonrho.
Rear-Admiral Sir Matthew Sausse Slattery, was a British naval officer, military aviator and businessman. He was the managing director and chairman of Short Brothers and Harland, chairman of British Overseas Airways Corporation and latterly served as chairman of Hawthorn Leslie and Company. He was also a board member of Bristol Aeroplane Company and The National Bank.
Sir John Ross Stainton was a British businessman, and a former chief executive of British Airways and BOAC in the 1970s.
Sir Peter Masefield was a leading figure in Britain's post war aviation industry, as Chief Executive of British European Airways in the 1950s, and chairman of the British Airports Authority in the 1960s.
Hugh Palliser Kingsley Dibley is a former commercial airline pilot and trainer who made contributions toward conserving fuel and controlling noise during aircraft operations. He was also a successful racing car driver and race car constructor.
Company lawyer who became British Airways boss
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