[1] After Thomas left university in 1890 he joined his father's newspaper business as a director then became its general manager and later founded The Bystander with its comic strip character "Old Bill" and Empire Illustrated so making his own name and fortune.

Through the Farmans he engaged a French pilot, Louis Paulhan, to compete for the £10,000 prize Holt Thomas's friend Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail offered in 1906 for a successful flight from London to Manchester, a distance far greater than anyone had then flown.

[citation needed] His Airco designs, pre-fixed with his initials D.H.,[4] made up around 30% of all trainers, fighters and bombers used by Britain and the United States during the First World War.

He painted word pictures of trunk routes through Britain and Ireland with links throughout Europe even to the United States and New Zealand through India and Australia.

[8][9] When the armistice came[10] Holt Thomas turned his considerable abilities to keeping his aviation business together and brought in Sefton Brancker,[11] Francis Festing and Mervyn O'Gorman.

[21][22] Air Transport & Travel continued another eight months under the management of Frank Searle of Daimler Hire Limited within the BSA group.

Holt Thomas was able to assist Geoffrey de Havilland to purchase those assets he needed to form his own aircraft manufacturing business.

No one who met him in those early days can visualize him as a business man but as an aviation enthusiast, keen on our progress from a national point of view...