Imperial Airways travel poster, 1924.

Colour lithograph by Charles G Dickson advertising the Cairo-Baghdad-Karachi service. An Armstrong Whitworth Argosy flies over the Pyramids and the River Nile in Egypt. Imperial Airways Limited was formed by the British government on 31 March 1924, after a government report recommended that Britain's interests in commercial air transport would be best served by merging the larger existing aircraft companies. The four companies concerned were Handley Page Transport, the Instone Airline, Daimler Airway and British Marine Air Navigation, all four of which had struggled to operate at a profit.