Airline liveries and logos

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Airline aircraft liveries and logos are used to provide distinctive branding for corporate and commercial reasons. They also have to combine powerful symbols of national identity while being acceptable to an international market.[1]

Contents

[edit] National flag, symbol, or elements thereof

Russian flags on Aeroflot aircraft.
Maltese Cross on an Air Malta aircraft.
  • Alitalia: National color flag in the "A" logo on the tail and in all plane.
  • Batavia Air: the stylized letter "B" logo.
  • British Airways: Britain's Flag carrier shows a section of the British Union Flag on the aircraft tail.

Some aircraft also show the complete Union Flag near the nose.

Taeguk symbol on an Korean Air aircraft.
  • LAN Airlines: A five-points star over a blue background representing the one which is the national flag of Chile, also representing the two colors of it second flag carrier subsindary, Peru, and its flag colors, white and a red line below it.
  • Malev Hungarian Airlines : National flag shaped as a tail wing made of 3 lines with the national colors (red white green).
  • Pakistan International Airlines: National flag in a wavy design takes up whole tail in official Pakistan dark green colours with white crescent moon and star as found on the Pakistan flag.
  • Philippine Airlines: National flag, formed as two triangles of blue and red with a sun superimposed on the blue triangle.
  • Royal Air Maroc: A green Sharifian Star in the tail, with two parallel lines in national colors (green and red).
  • Saudi Arabian Airlines: Two crossed swords with a palm tree, Saudi Arabia national symbol.
  • South African Airways: National flag colours plus sun, adopted in 1997 (replacing the springbok antelope).
  • Swissair: Swiss white cross in a red parallelogram, now used by successor airline Swiss International Air Lines.
  • United Airlines: New livery due to merger with Continental Airlines - see above entry for Continental Airlines.
  • US Airways: A stylized flag, resembling the flag of the United States, is incorporated into the US Airways Logo and painted on the tail.

[edit] Animals

[edit] Birds

Other airlines which use non-specific birds include Kuwait Airways, Biman Bangladesh and Ukraine International Airlines.

[edit] Other animals

[edit] Botanical elements

Plum blossom flower, the national flower of Republic of China (Taiwan), on China Airlines aircraft.

[edit] People

[edit] Objects

The characteristic Olympic Rings logo of Olympic Airlines, now Olympic Air.

[edit] Colors

Garuda Indonesia new livery

[edit] Legendary figures

  • Air China: A phoenix, in the form of the letters "VIP".
  • Dragonair: A dragon (with three claws on its left side, one on its right).
  • Druk Air: A dragon.
  • Egyptair: The falcon-headed Horus, the winged Egyptian god of the sun, restylised in 2008.
  • Iran Air: A griffin.
  • Srilankan Airlines: A 'monara' from the mythical Dandumonara Yanthra (a flying machine that resembles peacock).
  • Varig: Varig's first logo was a image of Icaro and it's wings. After the adoption of the famous "star"(in fact it was a stylished compass) the Icaro figure was maintained on the fuselage of the airplanes, near to the front door.
Dragon on a Dragonair aircraft.

[edit] Unpopular designs

British Airways introduced varied and unusual tailfin designs in 1997. These "airline liveries and logos" were intended to make the airline's branding more cosmopolitan and were described as "arty" and "ethnic". They were unpopular with many customers and also caused confusion for ground controllers who had more difficulty recognising the British Airways ethnic liveries aircraft to give clear taxiing instructions. Despite the £60M expense of this livery, it was replaced completely in 2001 and the airline has now returned to a more traditional design based upon the Union flag.[2] Brussels Airlines first logo was a stylised letter B composed of 13 dots resembling a runway. This was thought to be unlucky and protests by superstitious passengers caused the airline to add another dot.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Crispin Thurlow and Giorgia Aiello (2007), "National pride, global capital: a social semiotic analysis of transnational visual branding in the airline industry", Visual Communication 6 (3): 305–344, doi:10.1177/1470357207081002, http://vcj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/3/305 
  2. ^ R.I.P. British Airways' funky tailfins, BBC, Friday, 11 May, 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk/1325127.stm 
  3. ^ 'Unlucky' airline logo grounded, BBC, 21 February 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6383171.stm 

[edit] External links

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