100th anniversary British Airways retro liveries from inflight 200

As part of its 100-year birthday, British Airways has painted four of its current fleet, including three Boeing 747s, in retrospective liveries to celebrate its heritage.

The first to receive its new 'old' colours was 747-436 registration G-BYGC and it will wear its new BOAC livery (above, right), originally seen from 1964 to 1974, until the end of its service with BA in 2023. The re-liveried aircraft arrived at Heathrow on 18th February, before entering service the following day. This coincided with the 50th anniversary of the first Boeing 747 flight only a few days earlier.

Next to get its new flying colours was Airbus A319-131, G-EUPJ, that is now adorned with a replica BEA livery (above, left) used from 1959 to 1968, with the exception of the originally red upper wing being replaced by grey to meet current wing paint reflectivity requirements.

Both BEA and BOAC merged to form British Airways in 1974 and InFlight 200 has already announced a limited run of 1/200 scale replicas of both of these spectacular aircraft.

The third and fourth liveries are on 747-436 G-BNLY (now wearing the British Airways 'Landor' colours used from 1984 to 1997) and 747-436 G-CIVB (British Airways 'Negus', 1974 to 1980), both of these will also wear these colours until retirement in 2023. No doubt there will be replicas of these two announced very soon too.