Flyby Wire: November 24th, 2013
Welcome to Flyby Wire, a weekly look at new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. This week: look up! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s British Airways! Read more
New uniforms for American Airlines
American Airlines has revealed its new uniform design to employees in an internal memo, AirlineGeeks.com reports. The new uniforms, designed by KAUFMANFRANCO, are mainly grey and replace American’s navy-blue uniforms, which have barely changed in more than 20 years.
Update, 10 December 2014: Jaunted has better pictures of the new uniforms. KAUFMANFRANCO did a very nice job.
Flyby Wire: June 30th, 2013
Welcome to the seventh issue of The Work This Week, a weekly roundup of new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. This week, American Airlines gets animated, KLM makes a game out of the airline business, and the airline formerly known as Fiji Airways is now currently known as Fiji Airways.
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Flyby Wire: June 23rd, 2013
Welcome to the sixth issue of The Work This Week, a weekly roundup of new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. This week, it’s the annual Cannes issue! Who won? Who lost? Who got blackout drunk and passed out on la Croisette? It’s all here! Except for “who lost” and “who got drunk,” because we keep things classy.
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Flyby Wire: June 9th, 2013
Welcome to the fourth issue of The Work This Week, a weekly roundup of new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. This week, the great white north gets a new blue plane, the new American gets new boarding passes, and Norwegian’s flight attendants rock new socks. Read more
Flight 1
There’s one facet of airline branding that’s subtle, yet intensely symbolic. And best of all, it doesn’t cost a thing. It’s the flight number.
In the age of rail, railroads often reserved lower numbers for their most prestigious trains. By the jet age, Pan Am used “flight 1″ for its fabled round-the-world service (flight 2 flew the same route, but in the opposite direction.) The flight an airline designates as “flight 1″ has powerful meaning. It may reflect the airline’s history (as in the cases of Southwest, JetBlue, and American.) Or it might reflect present priorities (as for Air Canada.) Sometimes flight 1 can give you a deep insight into an airline’s soul. And sometimes not.
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Flyby Wire: May 19th, 2013
Welcome to the first issue of The Work This Week, a weekly roundup of new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. On TWTW‘s maiden flight, we dissect what it means to be British with British Airways, burn calories for air miles with airBaltic, and rediscover the joy of reading with Qantas.
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American Airlines launched its long-anticipated new identity today, replacing the Massimo Vignelli-designed livery it used unchanged for more than four decades. You can find more information and photographs at their launch Web site, or watch this behind-the-scenes video. In the interests of full disclosure, I work at American’s advertising agency, although I do not work on their account. Here’s the launch television spot developed by McCann New York:
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For the UK premiere of this season of Mad Men, American Airlines ran a classic ad from 1968 from DDB’s “Fly the American Way” campaign. It was a fun idea. Too bad not many people saw it.
US Airlines? American Airways? Deltmerican?
The smart money says American Airlines will merge with another airline before it emerges from bankruptcy protection. Right now, US Airways seems like the most likely suitor, but Delta is reportedly also considering its options.
Of course, one of the main issues in any merger is what the combined company will be called. As with everything in the airline business, egos get involved. Often the merged carrier takes on the name of the party in the strongest financial position—but not always. US Airways was technically acquired by America West Airlines in 2005, but the combined carrier kept the US Airways name anyway.
And so I open the floor to rampant speculation: will the name “American Airlines” survive a merger? Or is its 78-year history near its end? Some of the merger match-ups after the jump are plausible. Some are patently ridiculous. But when it comes to naming, they all raise interesting questions.
Vote in the polls below, then explain your reasoning in the comments!