The decline of airline livery design

Here’s a link to a story from Flight magazine’s website, telling us about the arrival of a new Boeing 777 to the fleet of the South Korean airline Asiana.

The new plane is the first Asiana airliner to be painted in the new livery of this airline, as we can see in the pictures. 

 

And here’s a link to a picture of another Asiana B777, this time painted in the soon to be the old livery of that airline.

 

Another example: the next link is to a picture showing a Boeing 737 with the new livery of the Mexican airline Aeromexico.

 

And this link brings us to a picture of another Aeromexico B737, this time in the old livery.

Can you identify a pattern? Not a difficult task. 

 

All over the world, airlines are abandoning their various liveries in favor of different versions of the same new livery: a white plane with a colorful tail, painted with the airline’s logo and distinctive schemes. 

 

The reasons for this trend are obvious: first, more and more planes are leased rather than bought, meaning that they probably will not serve all their lives in the same carrier. When the plane is painted in white it’s less difficult to move it from one airline to the other. 

 

Secondly, in the age of the jetway, passengers are used to see the planes from within the terminal, a much restricted view compared to times when passengers were driven to the plane to board it. From this view, the most prominent part of the plane is its tail, which practically functions as a moving commercial board. 

 

The third reason is about fashion. Designing liveries is basically no different from any other kind of design and the world of designing is a world of changing fashions. Nowadays, the fashion is, how can I put it, minimalist… 

 

The outcome, however, is not encouraging. Although not all of the old liveries were good tasted, they were at least different, original and distinctive. Some of them, like Aeromexico’s, were beautiful. All those liveries are going down the drain, and are being replaced by a mass of semi-identical airliners, which, as in an army parade, are separate from one another only by the color of their beret. 

 

As far as I can say, today’s airlines can be categorized in three groups, concerning the livery issue:

 

 

 

I)                     The “hip” airline: the fashionable airline that goes with the times, which means that right of today it paints its planes with white scheme, as been mentioned above. 

 

II)                   The traditional airline: this airline keeps its current livery for decades, which helps its reputation and image of a veteran, reliable and steady organization. Examples: American Airlines, Continental, Olympic,
Iberia. 

 

III)                  The creative airline: an airline that doesn’t fear of high painting and maintenance costs, as long as its planes are sticking out of the herd, and making the brand more recognizable. Southwest is the leader of this group. 

 

“Half way around the world”: Part 2 – Iberia

As I’ve been telling in yesterday’s entry, the trip to LA taught me some more about commercial aviation, and this time I would like to refer to
Iberia, the Spanish airline. My ticket from TLV to LAX and back (and my father’s, who flew with me) was an
Iberia ticket, though only three of the six flights were on board
Iberia planes. 

 

This was my first flight on IB. Until then, I flew with British Airways, Swiss, SN Brussels, American Airlines, and a few other carriers. Personally, I believe that the airline industry is a standardized business, meaning that no matter how many differences there are between separate companies, at the end they all must catch up with the same standard of operation and service. 

 

For example, one day, in the early years of the industry, one airline decided that it will serve its passengers with meals on board the planes. A few years passed, and serving meals on board became a standard for all airlines in the world. And when a few years ago one
U.S. airline decided to quit serving meals on domestic flights, the other airlines didn’t wait long to lower their bar respectively.  

 

So when I buy an airline ticket, which ever airline it belongs to, I basically assume that I will get the same package, more or less. Commercial airplanes may look different from the outside – and that’s changing too – but they bare very little differences from within. The level of service is almost identical in most airlines, as the navy blue uniforms of the cabin crew are the same no matter who you fly with.        

The thing that puzzled me about IB is their fleet. There is a large number of Airbus 340s in this fleet, and it doesn’t make sense to me. The A340 is a 4 engine, long range plane. Its advantages lie with very long routes, like from the U.K. to Australia or some trans-pacific routes, but when it comes to relatively short trans-atlantic routes, like MAD-JFK, any airline will prefer to operate a twin engine airliner such as A330 or B767, which are much more efficient when it comes to fuel consumption. 

 

Visiting IB’s web site (http://www.iberia.com) I learned that this airline has a fleet of 31 A340s. In fact, it does not posses at all twin engine airliners which have ETOPS certification, like the A330, which means that all of its trans-atlantic routes are using the inefficient A340. I have to admit that those facts are quite surprising in an industry that is becoming more and fonder of twin engine, long range planes like the B777 and the future B787. For example, two of the
U.S. major airlines, Delta and American, do not fly any 4 engine plane. Not only that they have many trans-atlantic routes, but AA also flies to the
Far East, using the B777. 

 

But the questions about IB’s policy do not stop there. The A340 has two main versions: A340-300 and A3400-600. The “600″ has much bigger engines, which supposed to carry it for longer ranges. Flying from JFK to MAD, one of the shortest trans-atlantic routes, we boarded an A340-600, which was far from being full. The plane was obviously new, but to my surprise it didn’t have personal in-flight entertainment systems. Purchasing a new A346 with no such systems is something I don’t quite understand in the middle of the first decade of the 21^st century. 

 

There are many good things to say about IB as an airline, but on those things, I should say, my feeling is that IB doesn’t match the standards of contemporary carriers like BA and Swiss, and quite frankly, I don’t see why.

“Half way around the world”

In English (not my mother tongue) the expression “half way around the world” is being used when a person wants to refer to a VERY far away place. Well, a couple of months ago I literally went half way around the world – and back – when I flew from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles, 10 time zones apart. Some of the experiences I went through on this trip gave me material to post on this blog, at least on the aviation side (the vacation itself was wonderful). 

First of all, I don’t like long flights so much. The main reason is that I can’t really sleep on planes, so I find it hard to kill the time. As much as I like reading books, my reading capabilities are not so good, either, when I’m 30,000 ft above sea level. 

More important, I think that sitting in the same place for so many hours can’t be good for your health. And please don’t give me this stuff about standing up or pacing back and forth in the aisle. Maybe it’s good for guys on death row, but not for someone who is supposed to launch an energetic vacation coming down from the plane. 

So when I started to plan my trip to California, I knew I do not want a direct flight from TLV to LAX. In fact, back then there wasn’t any such flight. For some years, EL AL flew this route using a B762 that took off from TLV at about 00:30, landed at YYZ (Toronto, Canada) at 06:00, refueled, took off an hour later and landed at LAX at about 10:00. Just thinking of making such a flight on a B762 gave me cold sweat. 

But a few months ago, in the summer, EL AL decided that the Israelis flying to the west coast deserves better, so they announced a new non-stop flight from TLV to LAX, using a B772. Of course, this is much better than the former arrangement, but never the less, it is one of the longest flights performed today by any airline in the world – about 17 hours from take off to touch down. And you get to come down from the plane, exhausted, when the morning in LA is just beginning, and the sun is shining and the birds are singing.   

Considering all that, I decided I want to fly to LA in a flight with stops, and to arrive in a part of the day when I can check immediately in a hotel. After some searching I booked the following itinerary: 06:00 TLV-MAD Iberia operated by EL AL

12:30 MAD-ORD Iberia

16:30 ORD-LAX Iberia operated by American Airlines 

The landing at LA was scheduled to 19:15, when the local time at Tel Aviv is 05:15, which means that the total time on the air plus at three different airports is more than 24 hours. 

Indeed, quite a journey. But considering it was the cheapest offer, and the best schedule, and two opportunities to get off a crowded plane, I took it with both hands.   

opening words

Hi 

My name is Izhar Mizrahi.This is the first entry in my new blog, called “the Aviation Blog”. 

First of all, a few words about my self:I am 33 years old. I was born in
Jerusalem, Israel, where I have been living since. I have a degree in political science and international relations. I work as a department manager in a utility company. 

Aviation is my hobby since I was a kid. Back then, I had corresponded with aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing, Lockheed and Northrop, getting in return pictures and brochures of fighter planes and airliners. Of course, those were the days before the internet arrived. I also visited bases of the
Israel air Force, watching F-16s and F-15s take off. 

In the recent years my interest has shifted more to the field of civil aviation. There are several reasons for that, among them the relative stagnation of military aviation (it takes some 30 years to develop and produce a new fighter jet) and my current role as an airline passenger… 

In this blog, I would like to share my thoughts about civil aviation, airlines, airliners, Boeing, Airbus, the market, the experience of flying, and much more stuff as much as my schedule can afford. 

One other thing: aviation is a very photogenic item, and the web is full of photos of planes, but those photos are protected by copyright limitations, so my blog will not have, unfortunately, many of them. 

Please feel free to comment. 

Izhar

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