I'll be honest, whenever I see people saying these kind of livery are boring/dull etc I wonder why since for me simple livery are as good as the more complicated one and I think eurowhite livery are verry good for outlining the aircraft (+it's simple to do when I'll train with my airbrush and can allow tons of "what if" if the company do a new livery and release their concept like with lufthansa). I think the worst argument against those livery would be using the center of the fuselage to say "look, with eurowhite, there's no way to know wich airline the aircraft belong because we can't see anything identifying it in the middle of it" (I've seen it being done...). I don't like the "it's cheap" argument either since if it's cheap, wouldn't that make it better for the airline?
Note: you can dislike these liveries but don't forget that you thinking they're bad doesn't mean it is (+I think judging liveries is subjective and depend on the person taste)

I don't like them since to me "dull" is a worse crime than "ugly". It makes everything look boring, sterile and depressing. Like with cars, today "everyone" has either a silver, grey or black car. White on airplanes by it self isn't bad, but to me it becomes bad when everyone is doing it, as it turns into a featureless blob of endless white across the airports. Why yes, I do have strong opinions on color!

I don't think it's bad when other airlines are doing it (and always find it funny when drama happen because an airline decided to change its livery)

The livery does hardly matter at all. Put a free coffee machine into the waiting area for boarding and you achieve more for customer satisfaction.

seahawk wrote:

The livery does hardly matter at all. Put a free coffee machine into the waiting area for boarding and you achieve more for customer satisfaction.

But not for spotter satisfaction which is more what liveries are about. Unfortunately airlines don't make money from spotters.

I don't consider Eurowhite by itself to be dull, it depends on what accents are added to it to spicen it up. Eurowhite is the basis, it's a place to start. It's not the final result. Of course, if you don't add enough accents or you add the wrong accents a livery can fail to impress, it becomes dull. But that doesn't have to be the case, there can be some truly amazing liveries based on Eurowhite. It all depends on where you take it.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

seahawk wrote:

The liverfy does hardly matter at all. Put a free coffee machine into the waiting area for boarding and you achieve more for customer satisfaction.

I don't consider Eurowhite by itself to be dull, it depends on what accents are added to it to spicen it up. Eurowhite is the basis, it's a place to start. It's not the final result. Of course, if you don't add enough accents or you add the wrong accents a livery can fail to impress, it becomes dull. But that doesn't have to be the case, there can be some truly amazing liveries based on Eurowhite. It all depends on where you take it.

I agree entirely, it is how you dress up the plain white tube. A bit like coco channel and her ‘little black dress’ - it’s the accessories that make all the difference between dull and dazzling.

Take two similar examples. Iberia and Avianca have similar colour schemes and not too dissimilar tails. Iberia , IMHO is dull as ditch water whilst Aviancas coloured engine cowlings and the bird like ‘logo’ ahead of the Avianca titles just lift it up to make it look quite stylish.

Perhaps even closer to home - Iberia and Iberia Express. I never understand why the mainline fleet gets the duller livery.

I'm not sure how old you are, but for many AvGeeks of a certain age, myself included, the complaint about Eurowhite liveries is how simple and plain they are compared to how airlines used to decorate their fleets.

For much of the jet age, commercial airlines decorated their aircraft with different-colored cheatlines (stripes). This probably reached its apex in the late 80s/early 90s: think UA's red/orange/blue, AA's red/white/blue, TWA's dual red stripe, EA's dual blue stripes, CO's meatball and so on. Then came the late 90s/2000s, where planes were thick with colored paint: here in the USA, think UA's battleship gray and US's navy blue. Then the pendulum swung the other direction and all of that color and style and design disappeared and we were left with miles and miles of plain white.

Your LH profile pic is a perfect example. Many people, myself included, find/found it unfathomable that LH would ditch their signature yellow. Their planes now are completely generic. From a distance, is that LH or Delta or FedEx? They're all very, very similar. Another posted mentioned IB and AV. What do their tails even mean--they're now just a mosaic of colors, like a child's paint-by-numbers artwork. Some of us find that a mix of disappointing and poor marketing.

But as you said in the last line of your original post, liveries are totally subjective. I/we are entitled to think Eurowhite liveries are simplistic and boring as much as you are entitled to find them clean and fresh.

UALFAson wrote:

For much of the jet age, commercial airlines decorated their aircraft with different-colored cheatlines (stripes). This probably reached its apex in the late 80s/early 90s: think UA's red/orange/blue, AA's red/white/blue, TWA's dual red stripe, EA's dual blue stripes, CO's meatball and so on. Then came the late 90s/2000s, where planes were thick with colored paint: here in the USA, think UA's battleship gray and US's navy blue. Then the pendulum swung the other direction and all of that color and style and design disappeared and we were left with miles and miles of plain white.

Meanwhile in Europe most airlines skipped the thick colored paint phase, at least I can't think of any. It was just the removal of the cheatlines that made Eurowhite.

My first realization of that was when Martinair went from this:



To this:



The first one is the Martinair which I knew as a child but I have to admit the second looks much sharper, with the entire plane painted (I never liked the bare metal belly). The first looked like every aircraft in those days, the second was unique. And still it was recognizable as Martinair, the base principles were retained. They were enlarged, which was a good thing. But in a certain way it also stayed the same, it didn't become something totally different.

I think Martinair nailed it with their Eurowhite, that's how Eurowhite is supposed to be. Cheatlines are a thing of the past, they might be nostalgic but they're not of this time anymore. And they don't mean anything for the younger generations who didn't grow up with them.

jumpjets wrote:

I agree entirely, it is how you dress up the plain white tube. A bit like coco channel and her ‘little black dress’ - it’s the accessories that make all the difference between dull and dazzling.

I like to use AF as the example of doing this right. One of the pioneers of eurowhite, but over the years it’s evolved. The red swoop was added, the tail made less barcode looking, then the font was made bigger, and now the flying seahorse logo is behind the cockpit windows, and the winglets/tips are painted blue and have that same logo. It retains the classic features while also looking modern.

It’s ubiquitous. Uninspiring, unoriginal, essentially playing it safe. A livery such as KLM or Korean Air is far more memorable.

DeltaMD95 wrote:

It’s ubiquitous. Uninspiring, unoriginal, essentially playing it safe. A livery such as KLM or Korean Air is far more memorable.

KLM maybe, at least their current livery with the slightly curved thin line. There's nothing memorable about Korean Air, it's just way outdated. A livery that suited the 80's and was still acceptable in the 90's but this is 2021.

There's nothing wrong with putting a bit of color on top like for example TUI or Air Tahiti NUI, however please don't make the lines straight. KLM at least attempted to go with it's time by first thinning the dark blue line and later adding a curve to it, Korean Air never updated their livery since the 80's. It's hopelessly out of fashion.

Aerolineas Argentinas also has a nice livery with a blue top that is wide at the front (covers the whole cockpit) and gets thinner towards the rear, a nice playful twist. Their old livery with cheatlines just couldn't anymore, this is what they made of it and I like it.

I don't see it as unoriginal or uninspiring since the new LH livery inspired a bunch of model based around concept released by the company. I don't agree about the cheap argument because repainting aircraft, even in eurowhite would cost money and dislike it when people say "I could do better with paint", to me it show they don't understand the work that went in the livery with multiple cncept being done and then one is chosen

thebunkerparodi wrote:

I don't see it as unoriginal or uninspiring since the new LH livery inspired a bunch of model based around concept released by the company. I don't agree about the cheap argument because repainting aircraft, even in eurowhite would cost money and dislike it when people say "I could do better with paint", to me it show they don't understand the work that went in the livery with multiple cncept being done and then one is chosen

The new Lufthansa livery is perhaps a bad example since it gets a lot of criticism, most people don't like it. If the new Lufthansa livery inspired anyone, can you give any examples since I'm not aware of any. In fact I'd say Lufthansa is an example of how Eurowhite can fail by keeping it too simple. That's no criticism to Eurowhite in general, just to the way they used it. Too little accents (they left out the yellow) makes Eurowhite dull and that's exactly what the new Lufthansa livery is.

Of course it costs money painting an aircraft but what you're forgetting is that aircraft need to be painted every once in a while anyway, so it's the choice between it costing money and it costing money. What does it matter if you paint it in one color or another except for the way it looks? Often it takes an airline years to switch liveries because they wait until an aircraft is up for repainting anyway and then they paint it in the new colors.

No doubt there are multiple concept from which can be chosen, that doesn't mean the best choice is always being made. In the case of Lufthansa they obviously chose wrong. No problem, everybody makes mistakes however you should dare to admit that you were wrong. Lufthansa is still in denial about that.

The current Lufthansa livery reminds me of the Aeroflot interim livery from 1990, which was no success either. Very few people remind that livery, it was after all very short-lived. After they realized their failure they quickly introduced their next livery, which was a real beauty. It's the way everybody knows the new Aeroflot. Lufthansa is now where Aeroflot was in 1990, how long will it take for them to fix their mistake?



That's the Aeroflot 1990 livery I was talking about. It's Eurowhite, no doubt about that, and yet it failed. That is not to say Eurowhite always fails, there are some real beautiful Eurowhite liveries out there. But it all depends on the way it's being used, Aeroflot and Lufthansa both making the same mistake there.

note that I'm a sucker for simple livery and that I do what if model. I tend to think that they outline the aircrcaft more and the new LH livery look more modern to me while the old one (that I still like) look more retro. I don't find the aeroflot livery bad either (just wished zvezda would do more russian company than just them). I don't think they choose wrong for LH, you thinking it as wrong doesn't mean LH(or other avgeek) think the same

PatrickZ80 wrote:

seahawk wrote:

The livery does hardly matter at all. Put a free coffee machine into the waiting area for boarding and you achieve more for customer satisfaction.

But not for spotter satisfaction which is more what liveries are about. Unfortunately airlines don't make money from spotters.

Airlines certainly make money from spotters. I use them as a preferred means to get to interesting airports. And I prefer to travel on airlines with good looking liveries. Which means no curved lines. They make an airline look cheap.

If you look at the LH livery, you need to remember that is was a complete brand refresh and the whole branding looks a lot better now.

MartijnNL wrote:

Airlines certainly make money from spotters. I use them as a preferred means to get to interesting airports. And I prefer to travel on airlines with good looking liveries. Which means no curved lines. They make an airline look cheap.

Curved lines make an airline look cheap? I certainly don't agree with that!

Look at these beautiful curved lines:



None of those lines are straight and I like each and every one of those liveries. In fact I dare say a straight line looks cheap, it shows of little creativity.

Spotters make up such a little part of all passengers that airlines can't be bothered with them however they do want to look good for the photos they take. Otherwise they would fly entirely white aircraft which for some airlines would look even better than the way they currently look.

seahawk wrote:

If you look at the LH livery, you need to remember that is was a complete brand refresh and the whole branding looks a lot better now.

It was a complete overhaul, that much is true. The problem is that it didn't need a complete overhaul, just an update. Had they just updated their existing livery a bit it would have looked better than it looks now, which is way worse than their previous livery. Their previous livery was only just starting to show it's age but with a few minor tweaks they could have made it sufficient for the next decade. Instead they completely ruined it, it certainly doesn't look better now.

Not the branding though. The logo looks better in the booking engines, the lounges look better, the check-in counters look better, the website looks much better and the whole branding just works.

Who cares about the livery?

seahawk wrote:

If you look at the LH livery, you need to remember that is was a complete brand refresh and the whole branding looks a lot better now.

Did LH really need a complete brand refresh?

The branding part that most people see is the livery and it's boring as hell. The blue is so dark it almost makes it look black. Generic. Boring. Dull.

Before and after pictures of Lufthansa and SAS livery. The ones that are now are exstremely dull and bland. Now, you can argue and say that there isn't much change, but there is. It is often the small details that makes a livery pop. The Lufthansa and SAS liveries are also too similare in my opinion.

The new LH livery makes me think of FedEx, the old one was really LH. There's nothing LH about the new LH.

FGITD wrote:

jumpjets wrote:

I agree entirely, it is how you dress up the plain white tube. A bit like coco channel and her ‘little black dress’ - it’s the accessories that make all the difference between dull and dazzling.

I like to use AF as the example of doing this right. One of the pioneers of eurowhite, but over the years it’s evolved. The red swoop was added, the tail made less barcode looking, then the font was made bigger, and now the flying seahorse logo is behind the cockpit windows, and the winglets/tips are painted blue and have that same logo. It retains the classic features while also looking modern.

Agreed with Air France, and the other IMHO is Qantas. They were the first two major airlines to embrace ‘euro white’ but have constantly tweaked their liveries over 30+ years so that they kept looking fresh. Different fonts, variations of the tail design, both have now added their ‘legacy’ logo etc.

seahawk wrote:

Not the branding though. The logo looks better in the booking engines, the lounges look better, the check-in counters look better, the website looks much better and the whole branding just works.

Who cares about the livery?

No, it doesn't.

The logo looks worse on the booking engines (you hardly see it, it's the same as the background color), the lounges look worse (they're meaningless, not recognizable as Lufthansa as the logo just fades away in the background), the check-in counters look worse (who's check-in counter is that? I don't see a logo anywhere), the website looks way worse (too bland) and the whole branding just doesn't work.

A logo needs to have a contrasting color from the background to make it stand out, Lufthansa doesn't have that. They had it before, the background was blue and the logo was yellow. That was recognizable, from a distance you could see that was Lufthansa. But now? From a distance you don't see anything, it looks all the same color.

Every major airline that uses Eurowhite (and a good number that don't) knows you need multiple colors in order to make it work, Lufthansa hasn't learned the most basic design lesson. Contrast is the key to everything, Lufthansa doesn't have that. They had it, yellow is a good contrasting color on blue. By throwing away the yellow they threw away their recognizability, it just doesn't work with one color only.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Meanwhile in Europe most airlines skipped the thick colored paint phase, at least I can't think of any. It was just the removal of the cheatlines that made Eurowhite.

British Airways' Landor livery and Aeroflot's metallic livery come to mind.

I simply disagree. The new logo looks modern and makes the crane logo much easier to recognize. The old one looked like Lidl or an egg - cheap and dated.

What about the former Swissair livery with red tail, white fuselage and 'silverish' belly. Is that considered a Euro-white scheme? Or not enough white? Loved it btw.

seat1a wrote:

What about the former Swissair livery with red tail, white fuselage and 'silverish' belly. Is that considered a Euro-white scheme? Or not enough white? Loved it btw.

I would say that it is, and it was a good livery for it's time. Nowadays it wouldn't do anymore, it would need to be tweaked to suit the modern times. Not overhauled but tweaked. The grey belly would have to go for example, that's one of the first things they did when Swissair became Swiss.

But Swissair, and nowadays Swiss, was able to make white a contrasting color for their main color red. Lufthansa never managed that, they would if they would have reversed their logo colors, a white circle on a blue background with a blue crane in it. A blue circle on a blue background like they have now is just nothing. Still yellow would be a better contrasting color on blue than white, but it would kind of work.

luckyone wrote:

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Meanwhile in Europe most airlines skipped the thick colored paint phase, at least I can't think of any. It was just the removal of the cheatlines that made Eurowhite.

British Airways' Landor livery and Aeroflot's metallic livery come to mind.

Landor was Eurowhite, after all the planes were mostly white and there were no cheatlines on it. Okay, it had a blue belly which was okay in those days but the top was white.

Aeroflot metallic was what had to be done after their 1990 Eurowhite livery failed. From what I know about it they looked into this livery with white instead of metallic but decided metallic looked better and I can't blame them for it. But keep in mind, they did briefly have Eurowhite before introducing the metallic livery.

seahawk wrote:

I simply disagree. The new logo looks modern and makes the crane logo much easier to recognize. The old one looked like Lidl or an egg - cheap and dated.

Easier to recognize? From close up maybe, but from a distance certainly not. In fact from a distance you don't see the logo at all. You only see blue.

I rarely look at my phone from a distance. And the most time I see the logo is on the internet or maybe in the airport, where the new branding works just fine.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

luckyone wrote:

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Meanwhile in Europe most airlines skipped the thick colored paint phase, at least I can't think of any. It was just the removal of the cheatlines that made Eurowhite.

British Airways' Landor livery and Aeroflot's metallic livery come to mind.

Landor was Eurowhite, after all the planes were mostly white and there were no cheatlines on it. Okay, it had a blue belly which was okay in those days but the top was white.

Aeroflot metallic was what had to be done after their 1990 Eurowhite livery failed. From what I know about it they looked into this livery with white instead of metallic but decided metallic looked better and I can't blame them for it. But keep in mind, they did briefly have Eurowhite before introducing the metallic livery.

I wouldn't call Landor White. Technically it is called "pearl grey," and it replaced a much whiter fuselage.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

luckyone wrote:

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Meanwhile in Europe most airlines skipped the thick colored paint phase, at least I can't think of any. It was just the removal of the cheatlines that made Eurowhite.

British Airways' Landor livery and Aeroflot's metallic livery come to mind.

Landor was Eurowhite, after all the planes were mostly white and there were no cheatlines on it. Okay, it had a blue belly which was okay in those days but the top was white.

Aeroflot metallic was what had to be done after their 1990 Eurowhite livery failed. From what I know about it they looked into this livery with white instead of metallic but decided metallic looked better and I can't blame them for it. But keep in mind, they did briefly have Eurowhite before introducing the metallic livery.

The BA Landor livery didn't have any white on the aircraft at all. The top half was grey, much like Uniteds "battleship grey" livery.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

luckyone wrote:

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Meanwhile in Europe most airlines skipped the thick colored paint phase, at least I can't think of any. It was just the removal of the cheatlines that made Eurowhite.

British Airways' Landor livery and Aeroflot's metallic livery come to mind.

Landor was Eurowhite, after all the planes were mostly white and there were no cheatlines on it. Okay, it had a blue belly which was okay in those days but the top was white.

Aeroflot metallic was what had to be done after their 1990 Eurowhite livery failed. From what I know about it they looked into this livery with white instead of metallic but decided metallic looked better and I can't blame them for it. But keep in mind, they did briefly have Eurowhite before introducing the metallic livery.

Aeroflot only painted a handful of aircraft in the Eurowhite, and dropped it. They received many aircraft after that in the classic cheatline livery, and received some 777s and 737s in a variation of the cheatline livery with a different tail design.

Jutlander wrote:

The new LH livery makes me think of FedEx, the old one was really LH. There's nothing LH about the new LH.

how so? the name and crane are still there, it wouldn't be LH if they got rid of that

seahawk wrote:

Not the branding though. The logo looks better in the booking engines, the lounges look better, the check-in counters look better, the website looks much better and the whole branding just works.
Who cares about the livery?

I think back in the day (meaning, up to the 80s or so), a lot of airports around the world did not have jetways, or if they did they were limited in number....lot of flights would just board using airstairs at remote bays, away from the terminals.....the exterior of the planes were very much visible to passengers and would certainly make an impact.....these days, most airports predominantly have jetways to board and passengers most of the times don't even see the exterior of the plane they fly in....not sure if this is one of the factors leading to plain, white liveries......

Gr8Circle wrote:

seahawk wrote:

Not the branding though. The logo looks better in the booking engines, the lounges look better, the check-in counters look better, the website looks much better and the whole branding just works.
Who cares about the livery?

I think back in the day (meaning, up to the 80s or so), a lot of airports around the world did not have jetways, or if they did they were limited in number....lot of flights would just board using airstairs at remote bays, away from the terminals.....the exterior of the planes were very much visible to passengers and would certainly make an impact.....these days, most airports predominantly have jetways to board and passengers most of the times don't even see the exterior of the plane they fly in....not sure if this is one of the factors leading to plain, white liveries......

And the whole booking process was different. You had paper flight plans to showcase the liveries, you had travel agents to showcase it on posters. Today people go to a travel website and the only thing airline specific they see is the logo and the name.

thebunkerparodi wrote:

Jutlander wrote:

The new LH livery makes me think of FedEx, the old one was really LH. There's nothing LH about the new LH.

how so? the name and crane are still there, it wouldn't be LH if they got rid of that

They did get rid of the crane, it's hardly visible anymore. Certainly from a distance you could see a yellow circle and you instantly knew that was Lufthansa, even if you were too far off to see the crane in the circle. Now you have to get really close to see anything at all.

Look at this aircraft for example:



Do you see a name and a logo? I don't, and that's the way you got to look.

The comparison with FedEx is partially justified, here's a FexEx aircraft with the same filters applied:



Even though it's blurred, you can still see that it's FedEx. On the Lufthansa plane, you can't. Both have a blue tail in the same shape, if the FedEx logo wouldn't be so clear you could easily mistake it for Lufthansa. Or Lufthansa can be mistaken for FedEx where they forgot to paint the logos on it.

By the way, look at this aircraft:



In that blur you don't see a name and a logo either, yet it's obvious that's Lufthansa. You see a blue tail with a yellow circle, you know enough. That's what you are to strive for.

Certainly right; livery doesn't make a difference. So why change it and make it worse in the first place and then spend /millions/ of dollars (or however much) to change something that "doesn't matter"?

They're basically shooting themselves in the foot. Millions of dollars spent, a livery ruined and homogenized to look like all the others, and upset a lot of spotters .

But, airlines do change it because modernization is something we can't not have and does affect your image, honestly.

Focusing on aesthetics and not the "financial value" of doing so, eurowhite is fine as long as something makes that airplane /unique/ and discernible from other airlines. Usually this comes in the form of color combinations.

Lufthansa had its iconic yellow and blue before it was horribly whitewashed to look "premium", because yellow was "loud", and not seen as a good "accent" to compliment the blue (oh and they still justified keeping yellow in the branding... because it isn't "loud" in that case, but it is on the airplanes).

Austrian had its light blue engines and red tail before that too was consolidated into a simple red.

SAS had its red engines, although I /do/ like the new one as they implemented a nice glossy silver as well as that of the titles. The old livery certainly did look kinda dirty, though not sure if that was just a result of age.

Now so many of them look the same. In the future we'll just have plain white fuselages with a swoop logo in the tail and plane. Korean and KLM will either have gone extinct or gone that way too.

I digress.

The old livery also looked more retro than modern in my eye and seirously? blurry picture to tell me the livery is unrecognisable? Isn't that a bit of bad faith argument here? And just because it's iconic for you doesn't mean it shouldn't be change, to me it's a good change beause the new lviery look cleaner and more modern than the old one (note that I like both). I don't get how they are the same if the police and tail design vary between each airlines, but I think we have arying definition of what similar liveries mean....

thebunkerparodi wrote:

The old livery also looked more retro than modern in my eye and seirously? blurry picture to tell me the livery is unrecognisable?

No, some blurry pictures to show you that a livery can be recognizable when blurred but the new Lufthansa livery isn't. That's the mistake Lufthansa made.

I agree that the old livery looked a bit more retro but that could be fixed with some minor tweaks. The new livery doesn't look modern to me, it just looks like nothing. The old livery could be tweaked to look modern.

doesn't look like nothing to me and while it was blurred I could still recognise that it's the LH blue and the LH name on the nose (and another thing that make me like the new livery is how many model I can make out of it by doing concept released by the compay in the making off since I'm a modeler who enjoy doing what if[such as a red tail revell boeing747 8i[I hope the blade will be better than on my UPS 8F because I got some flashes and broken blade that I had to repair on it] since they studied that but droped it quickly since the concept doesn't have the LH name on it, no matter if it's white/grey or blue since thye studided different color from it], hence why I say it can be inspiring)

thebunkerparodi wrote:

while it was blurred I could still recognise that it's the LH blue and the LH name on the nose

You recognize it because you know what it is, someone who doesn't know would never have guessed.

How would you rate the recognizability of these pictures compare to the Lufthansa picture?






























Same filters applied, no cheating there.

I recognise all of them and I'd say they're all as recognisable as the LH new livery Something that i don't really get is why did LOT thought LH new livery was similar since both company use verry different police for the name ,the LOT name is much bigger than the LH one and the tail is verry different too+I don't remember LH using red in their livery beisde the concept (wich didn't got far)