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British Caledonian was a airline formed from the merger in 1970 of British United Airlines and Caledonian Airways. The airline was formed to compete on international routes against the state monopoly carriers of BEA and BOAC. The airline's main base of operations was Gatwick Airport, and as an inheritance of the Caledonian Airways roots there was also an extensive hub operated from Prestwick Airport.

In 1975 when BEA and BOAC were merged into British Airways, BCal found itself under intense monopolistic pressure (see also Laker Airways). Despite this pressure is soldiered on, but never recieved the goverment protection or financial support that British Airways recieved.

British Caledonian created two subsidiary companies to expand into operations in different market segments without diluting its core Scheduled Intenational Airline brand. These were a charter subsiduary and a commuter subsidiary. This behavior was typical in the '70s and '80s when the expanding British charter market was seen as lower class and the scheduled international market was seen as upper class and jetset).

The charter subsidiary was significantly successful, and because it almost uniquely at the time (for a UK charter airline) operated widebody DC-10s allowed the airline to economically open the Carribean and Florida holiday markets to UK package holiday customers.

In the 80's BCal became a major launch company for the Airbus A320, however almost co-incident with its receipt of its initial aircraft, in 1987, the company entered a severe financial crisis and effectively shut down (stranding many passengers).

British Airways stepped in and bought out the airline, getting both its base at Gatwick and its new A320s. The A320s caused much mirth in the aviation industry at the time as BA had resolutely avoided buying Airbus aircraft (often creating rumors of signicant sweetners from Boeing to keep BA as a Boeing jet only company.)

British Airways the absorbed the international schduled part of BCal into BA, and meged the charter subsidiary with its own British Airtours charter subsidiary, to create Caledonian Airways.

British Caledonian was an airline. Originally a subsidiary of British Airways, it was sold on to the Carlson group which rebranded the airline simply as 'Caledonian', flight code CKT. The blue and gold colour scheme of the aircraft remained the same. The airline became part of the JMC group in the late 1990s which resulted in the aircraft forming part of the new JMC AIR fleet. The Caledonian name and colours were lost to the new bright green colours of JMC. JMC Air changed name again for the summer season of 2002 to THOMAS COOK AIRLINES. Thomas Cook retired the former Caledonian DC-10s that were in their fleet, replacing them with Airbus A330-200s. Thomas Cook Airlines still operates some of the newer A320s that were delivered to Caledonian shortly before their takeover by the JMC group.