Why Some Airlines Bring Back Classic Paint Jobs Decades After They Vanish From the Skies

On the grassy outskirts of Dublin Airport, across the looping service roads that bring millions of travelers to the gleaming gates of Terminals 1 and 2, there’s a massing of gray hangars the traveling public might not notice. One of them is home to International Aerospace Coatings, or IAC, which, as its name suggests, is in the business of painting airplanes. IAC operates 13 facilities across the globe, and its painters have sprayed on the liveries of the world’s best-known carriers: Air France, Delta, Emirates, United and many others. But in February, the IAC crew in Dublin primed their spray nozzles for a very different sort of paint job. Parked in one of the hangars was a 747 belonging to British Airways—but it wouldn’t be getting the usual BA paint scheme. Instead, the crew dressed up the jumbo jet in the livery of BOAC—the British Overseas Airways Corporation, a carrier that first took off in 1940 and hadn’t seen the skies since 1974. Once the paint was dry, a crew flew the jumbo jet down to London’s Heathrow Airport, where a crowd had assembled for no other reason than to admire the paint job. [kickout id="1"] "The enormous interest we’ve had in this project demonstrates the attachment many people have to British Airways history,” CEO Alex Cruz told the crowd. “It’s something we are incredibly proud of.” Proud … of a new coat of paint? Well, of course, Cruz was talking about more than just that. The resurrected BOAC livery was a well-planned nod to British Airways’ centennial. As such, bringing back a long-retired livery also constituted a dashing bit of marketing. And British Airways isn’t the only carrier to understand the power of paint. In recent years, United, American, KLM, Lufthansa, Alaska Airlines and Air Canada have all repainted their jets in the liveries of yesteryear. And British Airways didn’t stop with its BOAC plane. On March 9, another of the carrier’s 747s touched down at Heathrow with a throwback color scheme—this one, the famous Landor Livery. Named after the global brand consultancy that originally did the work, the design first appeared on BA’s fleet in 1984 and featured a stylized Union Jack on the belly of the fuselage and a regal-looking crest ornamenting the tail fin. Meanwhile, BA also took an Airbus A319 out of rotation and painted it with the old livery for British European Airways, another of BA’s predecessor brands. “We’re sure this latest livery will bring back a flood of emotions and pride in not only British Airways, but in the U.K.’s impressive aviation history,” Cruz said. [kickout id="2"] That might sound like PR speak, but the CEO was explaining the emotional impact these throwback styles can have on the traveling public. “In a highly commoditized marketplace, it’s difficult to find differentiation,” Landor’s chairman and global creative officer Peter Knapp said. "The one thing that the legacy airlines have over the aggressive competition of the low-cost carriers is history. BA celebrating their 100-year anniversary is an explicit signal of the value of their experience. In effect, they are producing their own timeline in the sky, via these retro liveries, which says, ‘Trust us, we’ve been doing this for years.'” Indeed, British Airways is only the latest legacy carrier to act on the value of that kind of messaging. In 1997, Air Canada marked its 60th anniversary by repainting one of its Airbus A319s in the old dress of Trans-Canada Airlines, the name of the carrier until 1965. In 2007, Alaska Airlines commemorated its 75th with its Starliner livery, a modified version of the color scheme developed for its DC-3 planes at the end of World War II. [kickout id="6"] And since many of today’s carriers grew to the size the size they are by absorbing the airlines of yore, a few have found marketing mileage in trotting those long-vanished names out of the hangar again, at least by resurrecting their paint jobs. [kickout id="3"] United Airlines, for example, bought Continental in a 2010 deal valued at $3 billion. Included with that transaction was a Continental Heritage 737 sporting Continental’s Blue Skyway livery from 1947. United has kept that plane flying. In 2015, American Airlines rolled out a plane painted with the historic TWA livery in a nod to the carrier it had absorbed in 2001. It was only the latest “heritage plane” that celebrated a preceding carrier that had, either by merger or acquisition, become subsumed into the American family. American also repainted some of its fleet to carry the liveries of long-vanished carriers like Pacific Southwest and Piedmont. (As a real throwback, passengers in the premium classes also received a retro amenity kit that included complimentary socks.) [kickout id="4"] [kickout id="5"] Repainting an airplane might be cheaper than a major advertising campaign, but it still requires a certain corporate commitment. The Boeing paint hangar used up four days of time and 110 gallons of paint to create the Starliner livery for Alaska Airlines, for example. IAC’s facility in Amarillo, Texas, took nine days (1,700 man hours) to create the Continental Heritage plane. But the advantages to a carrier in terms of public visibility and increased brand awareness are evidently worth it, according to Hayes Roth, a Landor veteran who's now a branding and marketing consultant based in New York. “It’s a pretty obvious marketing ploy and it doesn’t cost much to paint a plane,” he said. “They get attention from it and it gives them a story to talk about.” And in the case of British Airways, the retro livery also reminds the public of a (perceived) grander era before deregulation, cramped coach seats, lousy food—and Brexit. “The Landor livery … gives passengers a bit of a warm glow,” Knapp said. “It provides some comfort in the past, a pre-Brexit period when Britain was Great.” Of course, these advantages presume a flying public that’s old enough to remember the good old days of air travel. A retro livery may not conjure as much magic for someone in their twenties or thirties. “Does it appeal to millennials?” Roth said. “That’s a good question. I don’t know. But if you like airlines—and especially guys and boys like airplanes—my guess is that it would spark curiosity.” And a brand could do a lot worse than appealing to the fanboys (and fangirls) of aviation. Benét Wilson isn’t just an airline consultant, she’s a self-confessed airplane fanatic. And when it comes to the retro liveries flying around out there, Wilson has noticed all of them. “People like me, the aviation geeks—we love this stuff,” she said, though she concedes airlines are trying to turn the heads of more than just the aviation geeks. “It’s one of those cool things that appeals to people,” she said, meaning passengers overall. “I don’t know if it actually puts butts in seats, but it generates press and it gets people talking.” Meanwhile, she added, the aviation geeks are playing a larger role in this stripe of marketing than the carriers may realize. Because when they see a retro livery, the smartphone comes right out. “We aviation geeks love to take pictures,” Wilson said. “And we love to share them."

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Why Some Airlines Bring Back Classic Paint Jobs Decades After They Vanish From the Skies

Old liveries sometimes give carriers a cool new image

Robert Klara

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Robert Klara