Ask the pilot
What in heaven's name was Japan Airlines thinking when it ditched the crane? The pilot offers some lessons in airliner art appreciation.
By Patrick Smith
May 9, 2003 | I remember one day in 1997, taxiing at the controls of my Jetstream turboprop and encountering the gaudy spectacle of EgyptAir's newest livery as one of its planes crossed in front of us. Gone were the earthy red stripes and gold highlights. Up on the tail, Horus, the Egyptian sky god, was now oversized and floating in a tawdry field of blue.
The colors of a nation's flag carrier, I declaimed to my copilot, should evoke the imagery of that country, as did EgyptAir's prior design. The sandy tones reminded one of the Egyptian desert, with its great stone Sphinx and pyramids. The new EgyptAir seemed more reminiscent of the Vegas version of Luxor than of any true Egyptian imagery. Worse, the stark white fuselage, aside from being a coarse contrast with the blue tail, brought to mind ... well, not much at all.
The right corporate image, of course, helps propagate a sense of tradition and esteem. Take the old Pan Am globe, homely as it might have been. There is, or was, no better-recognized symbol in all of aviation. Or American's famous AA. Or Aeroflot's winged hammer and sickle, which it continues to use long after the Soviet breakup. The airlines take it seriously. When Northwest revealed an updated look in 1989, it issued a complicated set of guidelines to all its corporate departments detailing exactly how the name and logo could be reproduced in various situations, from ground-support vehicles to office stationery.
Ideally, the lineup of jetliners at a major airport can read like an atlas of international icons: the Lebanese cedar of Middle East Airlines, the shamrock of Aer Lingus, the winged springbok of South African, the Olympic rings of Olympic. The trick, of course, is to do it attractively. We also could mention the "Sir Turtle" mascot of Cayman Airways, who looks as if he just crawled out of a Bosch painting, or the tropical nightmare of Air Jamaica.
In the past decade we've seen dozens of airlines reinvent themselves through fresh paint. Not since the 1960s, when markings were first taken seriously by the airlines, has there been such an industry-wide investment. Corporate identities have been recast, usually at great expense, by big-name firms around the world. The most prolific of these is Landor Associates, a company with offices in 16 countries, which has overhauled the images of several world-class carriers from Northwest to Cathay Pacific.
The result is a more colorful tarmac, sure, but perhaps too rakish for its own good. We've seen some gems, and the past several years have been a period of tasteful restraint, of pleasantly muted tones and detailed textures. But sadly, and predictably, there have been some dogs as well, including a few inexcusable atrocities. All in all there are fewer lasting impressions, fewer of the easily identified tails we once knew. As for the implications, June Fraser, president of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, puts it like this: "National airlines change their identities at their own peril." It's all become bright, bold and quirky, but at the same time cheaply temporal and superficial.
Even obnoxious. Consider what Landor has done to Gulf Air, the carrier of Bahrain and heretofore wearer of one of my favorite liveries. God forbid, in this age of in-your-face corporate pitch, we dare ask a passenger to discover and appreciate subtlety. Behold Gulf Air's abomination of gilded excess, complete with a monsterized falcon -- white, navy, and lots and lots of gold. Perfect, maybe, for a sultanate swimming in cash.
If there's anything that the latest looks all share, it's the proliferation of the solid-color fuselage. The once familiar "cheat line," that thin band of paint stretching across the windows from nose to tail, is on the brink of extinction. There was a time when virtually every airliner hull was decorated by this simple horizontal striping, enhanced by nothing more elaborate than the airline's name above the forward boarding door. In 2003, the cheat line has gone the way of those drive-up stairs and cheesecake desserts between Boston and Washington.
Sure, there have always been some notable rogues. Three decades ago, Braniff International was famous for dousing whole planes in glossy reds, oranges and purples, pastel limes and powder blues. In 1973 Alexander Calder was commissioned to decorate the exterior of a Braniff DC-8, and later, for the Bicentennial, a 727. (Calder was working on a third Braniff plane, "Flying Colors of Mexico," at the time of his death.) But today -- and forgive me if my marketing acumen is old-fashioned -- travelers watching from a terminal window are asking the one question they should never ask: What airline is that?
As with Braniff's novelties of the '60s and '70s, today's de rigueur design relies on a perception of the airplane as a whole, rather than a separate body and fin. Traditional paint jobs approached these surfaces separately, while contemporary ones strive to marry body and tail in a continuous canvas.
If the overall color is white, as is often the case, the tail becomes the focal point -- an axis around which the entire impression revolves. Clever examples, like those of Emirates, have powerful fin markings that carry the entire, otherwise colorless aircraft. Similarly, Virgin Atlantic employs distinctive red engine cowls, while Gulf Air's use of Arabic script and a brief colored pattern near the nose was, until recently, quite fetching. Some have gone to a flying-warehouse extreme -- an empty white expanse with little or no detailing aside from a capriciously placed acronym and registration -- but most choose to exhibit at least partially rendered fuselages, avoiding the old-timey cheat line but without the anemic whiteness.
Next page: American Airlines: homely; Southwest Airlines: flat-out insane