Dan-Air (legally Dan Air Services Limited) was an airline based in the United Kingdom and a wholly owned subsidiary of London-based shipbroking firm Davies and Newman.

The early 1970s saw the acquisition of a pair of Boeing 707 long-haul jets for use on affinity group and Advance Booking Charter flights to Canada and the United States.

The acquisition of an Airbus A300 in 1986 marked Dan-Air's widebody debut and the late 1980s saw a major expansion of their scheduled activities, including the introduction of two-class services on trunk routes.

[13] Lack of vertical integration with a tour operator, and an inefficient fleet mix dominated by ageing Boeing 727s and BAC One-Elevens made Dan-Air uncompetitive, resulting in increasing marginalisation and growing financial difficulties as well as a change in senior management and strategy by the early 1990s.

Meredith was formed in 1952 as a small ad hoc charter operator and flew a single Douglas DC-3 out of Southend Airport, where it also had its head office.

[32][33] Dan-Air's arrival at Gatwick in 1960 coincided with the entry into service of three former Butler Air Transport Airspeed Ambassadors, the airline's first pressurised aircraft.

[42] This provided the funds to expand its charter business, build a network of regional scheduled services between secondary airports across Europe (with particular emphasis on the United Kingdom and Ireland),[43] enter the transatlantic affinity group/ABC market[7][23]: 28  and establish itself as leading fixed wing operator of oil industry support flights.

[55][56] The final stage changed stationery, ticket wallets, timetable covers, airport signs and baggage tags as well as its logo[57] in advertisements and public relations campaigns.

[58] Dan-Air's first overseas expansion occurred during the Cold War in 1968 when Frank Tapling, the sales director, visited German tour operators to increase utilisation of the growing Comet fleet and take advantage of the fact that all airlines other than those headquartered in the US, the UK and France were banned from West Berlin.

The Comets' low acquisition costs also enabled Dan-Air to offer German tour operators with flying programmes from West Berlin keener rates than other Allied charter carriers – chiefly, fellow British independent Laker Airways and US airline Modern Air.

On that day, a Comet 4 left the airport for Málaga, the first of almost 300 IT flights under contract to West German tour operator Neckermann und Reisen.

At 2,200 miles (3,500 km) the distance between Berlin and Las Palmas was greater than the shortest transatlantic crossing between Shannon in western Ireland and Gander in eastern Canada.

[72] The Berlin 727-100s' enhanced fuel capacity also meant that these aircraft had up to 20 fewer seats compared with their UK counterparts – 131 vs. 151 – to take full advantage of the resulting range increase.

[25][89][90] These ex-Skyways HS 748s enabled Dan-Air to open a seasonal Gatwick–Bern route in June 1972, the first direct scheduled air link between the UK and the Swiss capital.

During April that year, Dan-Air launched a year-round, same-day-return Gatwick–Newcastle jet schedule,[67] the airline's first UK mainland domestic feeder route from Gatwick.

Nineteen seventy-five furthermore saw the acquisition of two former Zambia Airways One-Eleven 200s,[103][104] the first time the firm had acquired jets to be exclusively operated on scheduled services.

[107] In November 1979, Dan-Air replaced British Airways as scheduled carrier between Gatwick and Aberdeen,[108][109] a feeder route for the oil industry.

[123][124][125] As the recession began to bite and passengers for Link City dwindled, the company contracted them to regional airlines operating smaller aircraft.

[69] In May 1984, Dan-Air began stationing an aircraft in Jersey, increasing the frequency of its scheduled service to Gatwick and converting it into a year-round operation.

[142] Following Air Europe's demise at the end of the first week of March 1991, Dan-Air began assuming most of the failed carrier's scheduled routes from Gatwick, starting with Gatwick–Brussels and Gatwick–Oslo.

[143][144] Dan-Air's rival's collapse also enabled it to increase frequencies and introduce larger aircraft on the busy Gatwick – Charles de Gaulle and Gatwick–Manchester routes.

[142] The expansion of Dan-Air's scheduled operation at Gatwick continued throughout 1992, resulting in the resumption of former Air Europe routes to Stockholm Arlanda in February and Rome Fiumicino in April.

In 1959, British European Airways (BEA) awarded Dan-Air a two-year contract to operate its six-times weekly scheduled freight service between Heathrow, Manchester and Glasgow's old Renfrew Airport using Avro York freighters.

[147] For a couple of months starting in October 1968, Kuwait Airways contracted its entire scheduled operation to Dan-Air, who supplied flight deck crews to man Comets while their own pilots underwent conversion training on the Boeing 707 in the US.

[165] 1989 marked a watershed – it was the first year since the era prior to the decision to introduce jets in the mid-1960s, and the only time apart from a blip in 1981–1982,[23]: 27 [23]: 29  when the company lost money over a whole 12-month period.

[3][170] Dan-Air's decision to embark on a major expansion into scheduled services from Gatwick at a time when the UK economy was still mired in the early 1990s recession made the financial position worse.

[171] This meant an injection of £49 million of additional working capital into Dan-Air's parent company from a successful share issue in 1990[172] was insufficient to fund the airline's needs.

[176] Dan-Air's last chairman, David James,[177][178] said weak marketing[23] and its charter mentality, even after the decision to make high-profile scheduled services the focus of commercial activities,[145][179] was a reason it failed to achieve results.

That meant that instead of making Dan-Air the airline of choice for high-yield business travellers on prime scheduled routes where it had become a major force in the wake of the demise of British Caledonian and Air Europe – such as Gatwick to Paris Charles de Gaulle – through carefully targeted marketing and publicity, Dan-Air continued selling the bulk of its scheduled inventory to consolidators and discount travel agencies, in the way it had sold its charter inventory to package tour operators.

[181] For its part, British Airways got 12 of Dan-Air's most modern Boeing 737s, a similar number of short-haul scheduled routes from Gatwick, the Heathrow–Inverness feeder service and about one-fifth of its 2,500 workers.