Posted : April 2014
Author : Andrijadurlanac
It’s a bard, it’s a plane! To help celebrate the 450th
anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth, British budget airline easyJet has
rolled out a distinctly decorated Airbus A319-111 emblazoned with the legendary
English playwright’s visage. The brilliant orange and white jet is the
centerpiece of easyJet’s promotional campaign supporting the establishment of
an annual national William Shakespeare Day on the literary icon’s birthday,
April 23rd. A curtain call for Flickr user Joshua_Risker for the eloquently
Elizabethan image of Sir Will above.
One curious feature of the promotion was the enlisting of
the UK’s
oldest living “William Shakespeare”, aged 91. Those interested in riding the
Shakespeare plane will be pleased to note easyJet will be running special
“on-bard entertainment” (their pun, not mine) flights from Gatwick Airport
across the carrier’s network in the UK and Europe this summer. We’re guessing
the Twelfth Night is fully booked.
Raising The Bar
In 2009 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover model Bar
Refaeli practiced a little double coverage when her bikini-clad likeness was
plastered across both sides of a Southwest Airlines 737. While the Israeli
beauty herself approved of the SIxSW promotional gimmick, the airline reaped a
whirlwind of controversy when some passengers felt the imagery was, shall we
say, less than family-friendly.
Painted On Porpoise
When Japan’s
Amakusa Airlines decided to paint their entire fleet to resemble the company’s
dolphin mascot, the firm’s accountants kept their composure… the “airline” only
has one plane! Amakusa managed to make the most of their resources, however, as
their workhorse twin-engine Bombardier Dash 8 turboprop was arted up to
resemble a mother dolphin and her two babies – one on each side. Everybody now:
“Awww!”
Amakusa Airlines may be small but when it comes to social
media they punch far above their weight. The company’s Facebook page gleefully
promotes the plane’s extreme makeover with a marketing focus on Japan’s
so-called airplane geeks. Riding the dolphin was never more fun… well, almost
never.
Flying For Dummies
You may not have heard of Kulula Airlines but this South
African (no, not Hawaiian) carrier is doing its best to get the word out.
Painting its planes a vivid shade of Toxic Waste Green is one way to get
noticed; turning a Boeing 737 into a full-size flying infographic is another.
While infographics are cool in their own right, there’s
something to be said for the TMI factor. On the other hand, in the event of an
unfortunate incident searchers might appreciate assistance in a little exercise
we like to call Black Box (which is actually orange) Recovery. A tip of the hat
to Flickr user Johan Hetebrij for the slightly disquieting photo from which the
above image was derived.
Bringin’ In The DOH
Low-cost carrier Western Pacific Airlines was only in
business for three years but they definitely left their mark on the so-called
“logojet” scene, employing over a dozen colorfully painted designs that not
only looked distinctive but helped bring in some extra cash. One of the most
memorable was the Simpsons Jet, a banana-yellow Boeing B737-300 bearing the
familiar faces of America’s
favorite animated family. Hmm, did they fly to Flanders?
Stupid Flanders!
Dreamtime Dreamliner
Launched in 2013, the Wunula Dreaming 747-400 was the fourth
aircraft in Qantas’ Indigenous Flying Art series. Qantas has made the news
overly often of late for all the wrong reasons – a bleeding snake stuck in the
wing, for instance – so a snazzy paint job paying homage to Australia’s rich
pre-colonial culture can only be an improvement.
It may just be the most memorable, though, thanks to the use
of searingly brilliant colors and an authentic historic design: the plane is in
effect the world’s largest moveable piece of Aboriginal art. No one could roo
the day they book passage!
Ich Bin Ein Bearliner!
Japan has
a CatBus, Germany
counters with a BearBus… and we don’t mean Southwest Airlines’ Bar Refaeli
Special, either. This smarter-than-the-average-Bearliner is an Airbus A319-100
operated by Germanwings, a Cologne-based budget carrier owned by Lufthansa.
In case you weren’t aware, the bear is Berlin’s official animal. Cool as this
swept-wing sunglasses-wearing soaring Sugar Bear is today, we wonder what
reception it would have received from the locals (and their occupiers) during
the 1948 Berlin Airlift.
Cola Air Wars
When it comes to the Cola Wars, thinking big is a must and
when it comes to commercial passenger airliners, thinking big means the
Concorde. At least, it did back in 1996 when Pepsi-Cola paid the joint
French-British consortium that built the swoopy SSTs an undisclosed amount for
a mere 16 days of unique branding exposure. Kudos to Flickr user Mikael Persson
for the dynamic image of a carbonated Concorde in flight over Stockholm
on its way to Paris.
Wouldn’t it be cool to be on board… and ask the stewardess for a Coke?
One does not simply re-paint a Concorde in corporate colors,
of course. The aircraft’s archetypical white paint was specially formulated to
withstand heat generated by friction with air moving at over twice the speed of
sound. The end result was only the fuselage was painted blue while the wings
remained white, plus lettering and logos. Was it worth it? Consider that Pepsi
is still fizzing today while the Concorde more or less fizzled out.
~Blog Admin~
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