skyguyB727 From United States of America, joined Sep 2007, 589 posts, RR: 1 Posted (1 year 2 months 1 week 6 days 16 hours ago) and read 1308 times:
Why are airlines slower to rebrand nowadays than in the past? With the Republic/Northwest merger, the planes had an interim livery of Republic colors with Northwest titles as soon as the merger closed. The same was true with the Air Cal/American merger. The photo database has pics of 737s in Air Cal colors and the American name. With those mergers, it was very clear which was the surviving company.
With more recent airline mergers, the name change has been very gradual. The WN/FL merger closed in May 2011 yet FL maintains a separate operation from WN. The UA/CO merger closed in November 2010, but ticket counter rebranding just ocurred at some airports last week. Until that time, there was nothing at the ticket counter to indicate any association between UA and CO.
nickofatlanta From Australia, joined May 2000, 1457 posts, RR: 0 Reply 1, posted (1 year 2 months 1 week 6 days 15 hours ago) and read 1253 times:
Probably a lot to do with the size of the mergers increasing over time (eg NW acquired Republic which was then acquired by DL which had previously acquired Western etc. - the scale is much larger = lots more planes to repaint). In the case of Airtran and Southwest, it's also likely to do with keeping different liveries until the configurations inside have been modified (i.e. converted to WN single class standard).
DocLightning From United States of America, joined Nov 2005, 16824 posts, RR: 57 Reply 2, posted (1 year 2 months 1 week 6 days 15 hours ago) and read 1192 times:
I dunno, but both the UA/CO and NW/DL mergers resulted in rapid repaints. There are no aircraft left in NW colors (and haven't been for a while). There are no battleship grey UA mainline schemes in existence anymore, either.
UA and DL both did their internal rebranding slowly, but their merger rebranding was lightning fast.
srbmod From United States of America, joined Mar 2001, 16888 posts, RR: 51 Reply 3, posted (1 year 2 months 1 week 6 days 7 hours ago) and read 918 times:
Quoting skyguyB727 (Thread starter): With more recent airline mergers, the name change has been very gradual. The WN/FL merger closed in May 2011 yet FL maintains a separate operation from WN.
Well one thing to note is that WN is slowly integrating FL's operations into their own, and they only got an SOC as of last week and plan on operating FL as a separate brand for some time to come. WN already had one FL a/c in the process of converting it to a WN cabin and livery and it should be in WN service in the near future (if it isn't already). Now as part of the merger, FL's remaining 73G orders and scheduled deliveries were transferred to WN and those a/c will be delivered (or were delivered) as 737-7H4s instead of 737-7BDs.
Southwest is taking a different approach to integrating FL into their operations. You don't have AirTran a/c in Southwest colors operating as AirTran (Unlike with the DL/NW merger in which there were NW a/c in the new DL livery operating as NW flights.). Back when they bought Morris Air, there were a/c that were in Morris Air colors with Southwest title:
Southwest understands the importance of their brand and by putting their name on something associated with another airline, it does something to the value of that brand. While Southwest has had a/c in their fleets in a hybrid paint job, many of those were short-term leases or were acquired a/c that they needed the a/c in service so quickly that putting the WN paint at the time was not an option.
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