Although the Treaty of Paris of 1783 was a peace treaty that ended the American Revolutionary War between the United States of America and Great Britain which sent the Brits packing.
The emergence of the US as a nation state and a global economic and military superpower has been the an indisputable fact. Whilst the British empire and dominance has shrunk globally it still competes aggressively and successfully in many fields. One such area is the recent domination of British airlines flying across the Atlantic. The US market for the Brits and vice versa reflects the close economic and cultural ties that remain between the two countries. The Sterling Dollar relationship also helps drive tourism in one direction or another.
The dominant Transatlantic carrier across the Atlantic between the UK and US is easily British Airways, when combined with the capacity of Virgin Atlantic the second largest UK airline, they form a formidable British presence in the US-UK market.
UK based airlines operate more flights and seats between the UK and USA.
British Airways alone will operate nearly 30% of the flights between the UK and US in Q3, 2023 and about 33% of the seats will be offered by British Airways.
BA also operates in a Joint Venture with its oneworld partner American Airlines across the Atlantic. Giving American and British Airways 52% of the capacity in a lucrative transatlantic market. However the UK market is heavily slot constrained making it difficult to add extra capacity without slot trade-offs taking place. Routes such as New York to London and Los Angeles to London command much of the capacity and revenue across the Atlantic. British Airways and Virgin have good beyond London connectivity to markets that are not well served by any one US based carrier. Routes to Africa, Middle East and Asia have better coverage from UK carriers, hence the US carriers in partnership (codeshare, JV's) serve as feeder carriers to the UK.
While BA became London Airways decades ago by eliminating direct flights from the UK regional airports to the US. Delta and United have operated routes to Edinburgh as one UK/Scottish leisure destination during the summer. Virgin also operates out of Manchester and Edinburgh to the US.
British Airways strong quality and luxury brand image is propagated by its unique marketing campaigns in the UK and US which have historically been the differentiator. Virgin also exploits its fun light hearted but elevated quality traits to counter BA. Similar to the British Airways/American joint venture across the Atlantic, Virgin has partnered with Delta in its own Joint Venture (JV) across the Atlantic which allows them to maximize the value of each others network and capacity.
So back to where we started, even though revenue is shared between some of the US and UK carriers based on partnerships and Joint ventures. The UK airlines have indeed conquered half of the US by number of flights and seats. If anything we can speculate increased British Airways and Virgin capacity to the US on existing routes in the coming months, and may be a few new routes which may be more economical for British carriers to operate than US.
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