santi319 wrote:

I still cringe when I see the new AA livery, truly terrible...

Funnily enough, while your opinion is widely shared in a.net, some people do like it. I really like, for instance. The old livery felt... old.

santi319 wrote:

Finnair also looks like a 3 year old did it.

Yeah. Actually it was done by the consultant's 3 year old daughter who accidentally got access to the design computer. AY execs loved it, and it was too late to confess where it came from.

Seriously though I have grown to accept the new livery, but I really liked the old one. The current one has too much white, IMO.

shuttle9juliet wrote:

Airliners.net new livery is awful lol

Haha

Eurowhite taking a hold here, too.

It probably weighed less and was cheaper.

That being said, I'm surprised that the el cheapo airlines of the world have not taken a lesson from Demand Media, and are not running ads all over their planes. Think about it. How great would it be, plane-sized adverts scrolling by.

And before you say "fortunately, it can't be done", let me disagree with you. A few powerful projectors embedded in the wings could easily highlight the side of the plane with pictures, at least in the darkness. Software-defined livery?

I think a lot of people are forgetting perhaps one of the worst liveries ever to grace the skies of Europe. Air Scandic's terrible MS Wordart hash up.

shuttle9juliet wrote:

Airliners.net new livery is awful lol

I am with you on that- the new format is terrible, wish I could have the old one back.

AirlineCritic wrote:

santi319 wrote:

I still cringe when I see the new AA livery, truly terrible...

'Funnily enough, while your opinion is widely shared in a.net, some people do like it. I really like, for instance. The old livery felt... old.'

I agree that the old AA livery was very dated, but I think they could have pulled something less generic and plain out of the hat.

Well, I wouldn't say Iran Air's livery is dreadful (Homa is beautiful as always), but it definitely needs a redesign.

bmacleod wrote:

Air Canada's 1993-2004 scheme was a real let down from its red stripe livery.

I always have hated that one, but those were the days when I didn't like Air Canada that much anyway. The interesting thing is that I was on C-FMWV a few days ago and it looks far more beautiful now in the Rouge paint.

The current UA design bothers me. It signifies a divided company. It aslo is way too old now. They have to make an all new brand. I am sick of seeing the globe beside the United writing. It just reminds me of how bland they are becoming and how bland their fleet is becoming.

As for the new AA, I like it. The only planes I ever have though looked good in the bare metal were the MD-80 and the 757. The 737 looked ok in it, but better in the new one. The 767 and 777 looked horrible in bare metal. It reminds me of the American that merged with TWA, then got rid of all their planes and their staff effectively removing a competitor. And imagine the same design with the bare metal replaced with silver paint for the 787 and all the Airbuses. That would be bland. The new one works on all planes.

I am not to impressed with LATAM, I don't like the Spirit crime scene tape, and I honestly thing WestJet needs to eventually do way with the teal look that really does look old. I generally do not like any Eurowhite designs at all.

I am Finnish and i also thought when i saw the new Finnair livery, what the hell?! but then when you see it against the snow in winter, like i did taxiing last winter at Vantaa on a snowy day it makes perfect sense, it looks fantastic
I think Iberia's new livery is crap

airliners.net
sorry I had to do it

I miss the old frontpage, it remained unchanged for what, 10-15 years?

The new AA livery, symbol, everything with the exception of the aircraft tail is appalling cheap looking. If they replaced the charcoal AMERICAN on the fuselage with a dark blue, perhaps it would make it more palatable, but that won't happen.

Delta's stupid flag livery was pretty cringe worthy

Not sure what that WOW paint is going to look like in a few years under the sun! Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Mongolian have fantastic liveries! Have you noticed how everything looks good on an A330?! When I first saw the current Air Canada livery I honestly thought is was just a coat of primer before the paint went on, I was horrified! I'm used to it now because I spot at YYZ and it really stands out at foreign airports, but geez! Rumour has it there's a tweak coming when we start getting the 737Max's. Just a rumour, I know nothing more! I really enjoyed the British Airways tails in the nineties, part of this spotting game is trying to catch as many as you can while they are around. The retro liveries are a great idea and the State Flag liveries on the Southwest planes are fantastic. Westjet has a couple of Disney jets that are pretty special too! But the prize for most disturbing for me is Windrose!

What frustrates me the most is when airlines replace a perfectly good livery with something *much* worse. China Eastern is one of the most obvious offenders. As a kid I remember how annoyed I was when the beautiful Airtours International livery was replaced by this ill-advised (and short-lived) rebrand:



On the topic of unforgivable things to do to an A330, I agree with Mimark06 - this color combination is viscerally offensive, to my eyes at least!

8. TW - Twin Globe
7. NC - Blue Goose
6. AA - Astrojet
5. DL - The 60s-70s livery
4. UA - Continited from a distance looks like damage to the leading edge of the vertical fin
3. UA - Battleship
2. NK - Cliffs Notes
1. AA - fAAil tAAil. This is the only one where I laughed the first time I saw it, and the next few dozen times also. Now that I travel from DFW frequently, I notice the worst part is the grey makes the aircraft look dingy in most lighting conditions.

Revelation wrote:

used tampon

Agree... you don't think that until someone says it and then it sticks.

shuttle9juliet wrote:

Airliners.net new livery is awful lol

^^ Threadwinner

What's wrong with Hello Kitty livery?

Don't hate what you can't understand!

thekorean wrote:

What's wrong with Hello Kitty livery?

Don't hate what you can't understand!

I can understand that having a cartoon kitten scrawled across the body of a jet is not at all likeable as a foundation for an airline livery.

A388 wrote:

Subtle changes is the key with these liveries. If you would change KL, CX, AF, BA, SQ and the likes too much, it will lose its recognition to their customers.

I agree, subtle changes is sometimes very classy, even sexy. However I don't agree with the second part of your comment. Airlines have done significant changes to their images without losing recognition.

For example, AF went from this:

to this (quite different):


At some point I'd like AF to make another significant change to its livery. As well as other airlines, but let's not allow too many worms out of this can.

1. Spirit. Somebody earlier in this thread called it the Crime Scene Tape livery. That's pretty accurate.

2. Air Canada's Aquafresh livery. That minty off-white paint is so nasty.

3. I hated NW's last livery. Bowling Shoe forever!

4. ...the less said about UA's current trainwreck, the better. Change it. Change it *now*. They literally took CO's 20-year-old livery and changed the titles from Continental to United. It was ill-advised at the time, and six years later it just looks flat-out stupid.

Revelation wrote:

The current UNITED design does reek of the Smisek team's inept and heavy handed approach to the UA/CO union. The livery, like the airline, is two things just thrown together instead of truly being unified.

On the other hand, is there going to be enough value in getting the livery right to justify the huge expense of repainting all the aircraft, redoing the signage and printed items, etc?

Clearly they did need to be repainted to get a common livery, and clearly this one is poor, but going to a 2nd one is going to cost a fortune.

Well that is all very true. What bothers me is the obvious display of arrogance and ego of the Smisek management from CO that took over that the paint scheme shows. It displays everything from changing to the inferior CO computer system just because to only really showing CO planes and staff on videos (that might be contract related, I don't know). They took the CO brand, made it much worse and applied it to all of the newly merged airline. It is improving, but it's still all really sad because you have great people on the sUA and sCO side working hard every day to get people where they need to go. What I also think is dumb is that they repaint all those non PS 757-222s just to retire them a couple of years later.

On the other hand, is there going to be enough value in getting the livery right to justify the huge expense of repainting all the aircraft, redoing the signage and printed items, etc?
In regard to this comment about the UA livery - I am going to answer YES, there is enough value and here's why I say so. As pointed out, the current livery and branding highlights that they are essentially two companies, two cultures, two sets of employees. This doesn't go un-noticed by frequent fliers and certainly their corporate culture is poisoned by the ongoing divisiveness. They need a complete re-branding - no globe, no tulip; new colors, the works. Their public and internal visibility must say "we are one company, looking to the future, leaving the past behind." Only then can they move forward. Just my two cents (damn, where are the old icons when you need 'em?)

I'm not a fan of this all white colour schemes, and where several of us have picked up on JAL, personally I would like to see the black and red cheatline return on their aircraft. Some of the airlines that have this all white scheme and a little logo on the tail, make it look like they've just picked up the aircraft from the desert or a leaser or something .....we're only going to have the plane for a month, therefore we won't bother to paint it properly.

Having said that of course, there are a few exceptions...Lufthansa, Swiss and Qantas for example where it seems to work.

I think it's also fair to add that some aircraft wear some colours better than others too.

Poor liveries..... in no particular order (based on their latest colours)

1. United Airlines ........4/10 ...must try harder to come up with something a bit better...looking at my watch it must be time for yet another change
2. Brussels Airlines .....4/10 ...granted the grey adds something, but doesn't say a lot when a colour scheme is improved by a grey underbelly ...at least it's not all white
3. SAS ........................4/10 ...really must do better, with all the colours of Denmark, Sweden and Norway to play with, and the grey tone shows up the dirt (or are they not washing their planes?)
4. LATAM ...................5/10 ...the LAN colour scheme stood out in a crowd, this one is hmmm
5. Iberia ......................6/10 ...the old scheme had more character than this one (as it fades in the sun). It has grown on me since it first come out, but opportunity missed for a more distinctive one
6. Royal Brunei ..........5/10 ....its not as though they couldn't afford some paint.
7. China Eastern ........4/10 ....looks like someone dropped their pen, then banged their head on the table getting back up when they approved this one.....
8. Malaysia Airlines.....6/10 ....no corporate identify, perhaps that's the plan..... they look like flying toothpaste tubes (the Aquafresh variety)
9. White Airways.........2/10 ....What come first? The name or the colour scheme? Which is their plane, oh it's the one over there next to the Royal Brunei, LATAM and China Eastern one.
10. Star Alliance .........1/10 ....Even Aeroflot in the Soviet era was more interesting than this. I can't help but thinking, if this was the design they choose, what must the others have been like?



Worthy of praise for standing out in a crowd on the taxiway.......
ANA, Thai, Qantas, Air NZ, Hawaiian Airlines, Fiji Airways, Royal Jordanian (aka the Flying Turd), Egyptair, Alaska Airlines Gulf Air, Vietnam Airlines

n729pa wrote:

3. SAS ........................4/10 ...really must do better, with all the colours of Denmark, Sweden and Norway to play with, and the grey tone shows up the dirt (or are they not washing their planes?)

I agree that SAS must do better in their livery. Scandinavia is one of the more interesting areas of the world, think of all the whites, reds, blues and yellows they could possibly use, yet nothing. One or more of those colours could make a very interesting cheatline, or a Scandinavian Cross on their tail, yet we have a blue one with SAS scrawled on it. Disappointing indeed.

I know it's not a popular opinion, but I hated the bare metal AA livery. It was so outdated and made their aircraft look dirty and old. I think the new AA livery is clean, fresh, and a huge improvement over the old one.

Another one that really disappoints me is China Eastern's new livery. I absolutely loved the old livery, even if it was outdated, it just had so much character to it and I'm a sucker for the black patch under the cockpit windows and the black dots on the nosecones of the old liveries. Their new livery is so bland. I hate seeing airlines with awesome liveries replace them with a boring Eurowhite design.