Why Britain consolidated postwar civil aviation

Would Britain have been economically better off forming a single British Airways in 1946?

Possibly in hindsight. Policymakers already expected a single large corporation to be viable, but events did not meet that expectation.

Forming a single British Airways in 1946 may look economically better in hindsight than maintaining separate British European and overseas corporations. Contemporary policymakers already expected consolidation to create an entity with enough scale and strength to meet Britain's needs. Events did not bear out that expectation. A plausible forecast about institutional scale could still fail once put into practice.