Regular international passenger air service began in August 1919 with a flight going from London, England to Paris, France. The journey was organized and operated by the firm Air Transport & Travel Ltd (AT&T), which would later serve as a forerunner of British Airways (BA).

Aviation in the United Kingdom began as a series of pioneering experiments in the late 18th and early 20th centuries. The first recorded "flight" was in a hot air balloon by Vincenzo Lunardi in 1784. However, the era of fixed-wing, powered flight officially arrived on October 16, 1908, when American Samuel Cody made the first recognized powered flight in Great Britain at Farnborough. Following World War I, commercial aviation was born; the world's first daily international scheduled flight began on August 25, 1919, flying between London (Hounslow Heath) and Paris (Le Bourget). This service was operated by Aircraft Transport and Travel (AT&T), a forerunner to what would eventually become British Airways. By the 1930s, Gatwick and Croydon had become major hubs for a growing network of domestic and European routes. The "Jet Age" in the UK was ushered in by the de Havilland Comet in 1952, the world's first commercial jetliner. In 2026, the UK remains a global aviation leader, building on over a century of history that transformed the island from a balloon-testing ground into one of the most connected nations on Earth.