North Eastern Airways (NEA) was a British airline which operated from 1935 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Based initially in Newcastle upon Tyne, it operated routes from Scotland to London in competition with the railways, retaining its independence to the end.
History
Formation
The company was formed on 4 March 1935 by a group of investors headed by Ralph Beckett, 3rd Baron Grimthorpe. Lord Grimthorpe was a wealthy banker and racehorse owner who also had a keen interest in aviation. In 1931, with two De Havilland Aircraft Company employees A Hessel-Tiltman and Nevil Shute Norway along with Alan Cobham as directors, he became the chairman of Airspeed Ltd, which went on to create, among other notable aircraft, the Courier and Envoy transport aircraft.
With Lord Grimthorpe's link with Airspeed, it was natural that the first aircraft that NEA acquired were three new Envoy 6-passenger airliners, becoming the first airline customer of the type.
The first service to be operated was the east coast route to Scotland, from London (Heston) to Leeds (Yeadon), Newcastle (Cramlington) and Edinburgh (Turnhouse). The fare between London and Edinburgh was £10. The inaugural flight started at Leeds and Bradford Municipal Aerodrome, otherwise known as Yeadon Airport, where on 8 April 1935 the first aircraft, Airspeed Envoy G-ADAZ, was named Tynedale by Mrs Anthony Eden (Beatrice Beckett). The aircraft was then flown, with Mrs Eden and other dignitaries on board, to Heston, where it skidded on landing, running into a fence. While this was an embarrassment for what had been the first ever scheduled flight operated from Yeadon, no one was harmed, and the aircraft suffered only superficial damage.
The Edinburgh leg could not initially be operated due to lack of radio and navigation aids, defeating the object of the exercise. Even when Edinburgh service did start, on 27 May, demand was so low that the whole route was closed on 27 June and the airline's assets were taken over by another of Grimthorpe's companies, Alp Aviation. The reason for the low demand was that existing railway services were fast, regular, comfortable, cheap, and much less dependent on the weather.
The route was restarted by NEA on 2 November 1936. This time the London terminus was Croydon Airport, and the Scottish one was Perth (Scone Aerodrome) which had opened earlier that year. The airport at Newcastle had also changed with the opening of Woolsington Aerodrome (now Newcastle International Airport). Since Edinburgh was now being bypassed, stops, presumably by request, were made at Macmerry Airfield, 15 miles east of Edinburgh. The change of Scottish airport was because of pressure from the London and North Eastern Railway (L.N.E.R.) which was concerned about the competition on the Edinburgh route, and barred its ticket offices and other travel agents from selling the airline's tickets. This time the airline persisted, even extending the service to Aberdeen (Dyce Airport), and by 1937 offering an express service from Croydon to Aberdeen with just one stop (at Doncaster). The Aberdeen link was soon abandoned because of a lack of radio aids there.
Growth
1937 was a year of expansion with the addition of De Havilland Rapides to the fleet, and with Doncaster Airport as the hub of new routes to Leeds, to Liverpool (Hooton Park) via Manchester (Barton Aerodrome) and to Hull (Hedon Aerodrome). From Hull they ran a ferry service with the Airspeed Couriers across the Humber Estuary to Grimsby (Waltham Aerodrome), a route pioneered by North Sea Aerial and General Transport in 1932–3. The airline had also established the Doncaster Aero Club as a subsidiary.
1937 was also the year when North Eastern Airways joined the International Air Traffic Association (IATA), later to become the International Air Transport Association. This gave the airline a degree of prestige and assisted in L.N.E.R abandoning their ticket sale ban from 21 December that year. Indeed, cooperation grew, and in the Summer 1938 timetable it is noted that airline tickets and rail tickets on almost all the airline's routes were “interavailable” with L.N.E.R. and L.M.S.R. (London, Midland and Scottish Railway) allowing outward journey by air and return by first-class rail, or outward journey by rail and return by air for a supplement.
When an Airspeed Envoy was delivered to the King's Flight in 1937, Lord Grimthorpe had a plaque installed at the front of the cabin of his Envoys informing the passengers that the aircraft was the same type in which the King flew.
In 1938 NEA operated special services to Glasgow (Renfrew Airport) for the Empire Exhibition which opened on 3 May.