International Airlines Group
British-Spanish multinational airline holding company
International Consolidated Airlines Group S.A., trading as International Airlines Group and usually shortened to IAG, is a British-Spanish multinational airline holding company with its registered office in Madrid, Spain, and its corporate headquarters in London, England. It was formed in January 2011 after a merger agreement between British Airways and Iberia, the flag carriers of the United Kingdom and Spain respectively, when both became wholly owned subsidiaries of IAG. British Airways shareholders were given 55% of the shares in the new company.
Since its creation, IAG has expanded its portfolio of operations and brands by purchasing other airlines – BMI (2011), Vueling (2012) and Aer Lingus (2015). The group also owns LEVEL and Avios, a frequent-flyer programme.
The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and the Madrid Stock Exchange. It is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and IBEX 35 Index.
History
Creation of IAG as BA/Iberia holding company
British Airways and Iberia signed a preliminary merger agreement in November 2009. In April 2010, they signed a full merger agreement, with an intended completion date of late 2010, subject to securing the necessary regulatory approvals. The merger between British Airways and Iberia was completed on 21 January 2011, and shares in the new holding company IAG began trading in London and Madrid on 24 January.
On 6 October 2011, IAG created Iberia Express, a new low-cost airline to operate short- and medium-haul routes from IAG's Madrid hub and provide transfer feed onto Iberia's longhaul network.
“International Airlines Group” enters the record as british-Spanish multinational airline holding company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what International, Airlines and Group can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“International Airlines Group” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, International, Airlines and Group provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8774. VIAF identifies the subject as 880145857885923020998. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2009.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “International Airlines Group”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow International Airlines Group primary sources, International Airlines Group archive and International research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “International Airlines Group”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “International Airlines Group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.