Developing BUA primarily as a scheduled airline was one of the first major policy decisions the BUA group's main board took in the early 1960s. The Civil Aviation (Licensing) Act of 1960, which abolished the statutory monopoly British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA) had enjoyed on principal domestic and international scheduled routes since the beginning of the post-war era and – theoretically – gave independent airlines equal opportunities to develop scheduled routes in their own right, formed the basis of this decision.