Last week, both Singapore and Aloha came out with some cool looking new planes. First up, let’s take a look at Singapore’s first A380 to come out of the paint shop. I definitely don’t think they got its best side. That cro-magnon looking forehead is definitely exaggerated even further with all that white space. (Taken from Singapore website. Photo credit: Airbus - C. Brinkmann)

Next up we have Aloha’s Wyland-painted 737. Yup, they say it was hand-painted by Wyland, but I don’t know if you can actually hand paint and airplane without affecting drag. Anyway, you might recognize the name - he’s famous for painting huge marine life murals primarily in the US but also all over the world. I found this one on the HNL RareBirds blog, a great place for airplane porn in the Hawaiian Islands.

First it was the Nevada plane last week, and now it’s the Arizona plane. I just received this photo of the plane taken by Kevin Trinkle:

Thoughts? It’s pretty boring. The tail is fine, but when you compare it to the spectacular old Arizona colors, this is nothing special. Bummer.

Without any exciting Delta news, it’s always easy to fall back on some good old fashioned Airplane Porn. This time, it’s US Airways once again.

US Airways has made it clear that all old America West 757s in special color schemes will be repainted in the regular US Airways colors. Fortunately, they’ve decided to refresh some of these schemes and put them on A319s. The first of these was the Cardinals plane, and now we have the first state flag . . . Nevada. They haven’t painted over the old 757 yet, so the airline sent me this excellent shot of the new one passing the old one.  (Photo Credit:  Kevin Trinkle)

The word is that the Arizona flag plane is in the paint shop now and the Pittsburgh Steelers and Carolina Panthers planes are on their way in the next couple months.

It’s now official, Delta is out of bankruptcy and on its own again. Let’s just hope they fare better than United has in its first year out. So how is the airline marking the occasion? Well, how about a “week-long celebration of emergence into a new era“?

In normal-person speak, they actually are doing something. Today is the official emergence and with it comes the new brand and logo. As you can see on the logo at left, they’re ditching the blue and red widget for a two-tone red one instead. The font is now all caps and more block-y (we’ll just pretend that’s an accepted way of describing a font). Delta’s media site has now been updated with the new look, but apparently someone forgot to change the site where CUSTOMERS actually go. Oops.

Of course, with a new logo comes another new livery. I talked about this one recently when photos of the new colors were supposedly leaked. Well, those photos were correct. Here is the new livery on a 777 for your viewing pleasure.

It definitely looks better than the dark photos of that model in my previous post (duh), but I still don’t think I’m a fan. The body is too white, especially when compared to the very dark blue of the tail and engines. The red widget on the tail (which I like far less than the old blue/red one) isn’t even fully there. Why is it so trendy to have your logo not fit entirely on the tail? United did it and so did Northwest.

That being said, I’m glad they kept cost-savings (PDF) in mind with this livery. That’s probably most important of all. This new livery reduces the number of colors used from 8 to 4. It also reduces the number of time required to paint a plane by one calendar day and 20 20% fewer man-hours.

The airline says that all airport signage will be up to date by the end of the year, but it will take four years to fully paint the fleet. So, that’s day one of the emergence. Can’t wait to see what the rest of this week long fiesta brings.

When most people think of a Delta airplane, they probably still think of the livery that was introduced back in 1959. Those colors adorned Delta’s aircraft for almost 40 years (38 to be exact), and they served the airline through many different phases.
According to Delta’s corporate history, the “widget” was introduced in 1959. I’m not sure if the familiar colors came about right away, but I know that by the early 1960’s, they were there. At the time, Delta was just a southern airline with grand plans. By the early 60’s they had started flights to the west coast but everything connected into their southern operation.

In 1972, Delta acquired Northeast, and that gave them a foothold in the northeastern US. This was a big change for the airline, but it did not prompt anyone to come up with a new color scheme.

In 1987, Delta again expanded by purchasing Western Airlines. This gave the airline a solid footing in the West with hubs in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. Now a truly nationwide carrier, they still didn’t feel the need to change their colors.

Fast forward to 1991. Delta purchased Pan Am’s European route network and that made the airline a global player. Once again no change in colors was seen as necessary.

Now, we get to 1997. Management decides that they need a new, updated look. Well, Ron Allen’s ill-fated regime ended and a mere 3 years later, new management thought that the colors were too reminiscent of the old leadership. So, in 2000, they changed again. You can read the press release here to get some laughs. Some of my favorite quotes. . . .

Fred Reid, Delta’s CMO at the time (and now soon-to-be-former CEO of Virgin America), said that “Ultimately, we are evolving as an airline, and our look has to evolve with it.”

Design-agency Landor’s executive creative director Richard Ford said “Over recent years, Delta has been an airline in transition; it is now the top-performing major U.S. airline in customer service, and its visual identity and more colloquial brand name reflect the confidence they have in their future. The new identity is a strong visual statement that reinforces this leadership position within the airline industry.”

And from the press release text itself, “The refinement of the logo, along with simple, clean and solid typography, contributes to a more timeless image for Delta.”

Timeless? Um, guess not. Because now it’s time for another livery, even though the Landor quote is still exactly what Delta is trying to be today. That’s three new liveries in 10 years, and that’s if you don’t count Delta Express, Delta Shuttle, Song, and some slight variations on the design over the years. So why now?

Well, they’re exiting bankruptcy, and they’ve decided that it’s time for another change. The old look isn’t fitting for the airline anymore and blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

The photos of the new livery have been making the rounds, and I first saw them at Holly Hegeman’s PlaneBuzz. Apparently, these pictures were taken of the model that’s being used for advertising purposes. That’s why I picked up shots of the other colors on models as well. (credit: Gemini Jets). Head over to PlaneBuzz to see a close-up of the new tail.

Do I like the colors? They’re fine. Not inspiring or anything like that, but to be honest, it doesn’t matter. It’s just another thing that will take the airline’s focus off of important matters in the first crucial months after bankruptcy. I fully understand the idea of updating a dated livery, but this is the third one in ten years.  If the same livery could take the airline from a small southern carrier to a global giant, I don’t see why they feel the need to allocate resourced to yet another one so soon.

It’s a busy day today and though I can’t wait to comment on the newly agreed upon Open Skies agreement between the US and the European Union, it’ll have to way until tomorrow. So for now, I’ll leave you with some good ole’ airline porn, video style.

What do you get when you combine schmaltzy songs and cheesy powerpoint slide transitions? A rockin’ tribute video, of course. This one is nearly 20 minutes long, and it’s basically a bunch of photos looking back on the history of America West. Unless you have a strange yearning for Dolly Parton’s version of “I Will Always Love You” or “The Morning After” by Maureen McGovern, let me suggest you turn the sound all the way down.

A friend of mine was at the rollout of Alaska’s 75th anniversary plane yesterday in Seattle, and he sent a couple of pictures. This is one good looking bird, despite the crappy weather which made the plane blend in with the clouds.

I think the gray body turned out well, though it remains to be seen how shiny it will look in the sun. The script “Boeing” titles just of the nose are pretty cool looking.

I’m not quite sure what the stiltwalker is doing in that picture below. I’ll just hope that’s not the flight attendant uniform from the old days.

It’s a good week for airplane porn. Alaska has finally released this computer-generated picture of its new 75th anniversary retro livery.

That is one good looking aircraft. I can’t wait to see it in person.

Yeah, that’s a confusing title until you remember that “Airplane Airlines” is what Mokulele Airlines translates to in English. These are the guys who are planning to fly as go!Express out in Hawai’i, and they’ve finally received their first airplane for the new operation. Here’s the picture, courtesy of the Star Bulletin:

You will likely agree that it’s not exactly the most attractive looking livery around. Yikes. While they originally claimed they’d be flying as go!Express last December, it looks like they’ll now be shooting for April.

In the meantime, they’re flying on their own. They have a timetable up on their site that was effective last December showing flights from Kahului (Maui) to Kona, Hilo (Friday/Sunday), and Hana (Sunday only) as well as Kona to Hana (Sunday only). These were being flown with older aircraft, but they’re now transitioning to the new fleet.

Thanks to the excellent Phoenix spotting site visitingphx.com, we have some early images of US Airways’ new Arizona Cardinals plane.

The one on the left is 757-200 (ship N908AW) in the old America West colors - one that was always one of my favorite theme planes. That plane has now been repainted in the regular US Airways colors and an A319 (ship N837AW) has been painted to take its place in honor of the airline being the official airline of the Arizona Cardinals. Sadly, I think the old one was much better, but oh well.