Flying Billboard Introduction

   The color scheme of the commercial airlines used to be a very conservative only displaying the company name with a few fringes. The company broke this tradition was Braniff International Airways. It introduced the “End of the Plain Plane” and painted their fleets with different colors in 1965. However, because it was too radical compared with industry standard at that time, no other companies followed.
   The new wave of coloring commercial airlines has to be waited until May 23, 1988, when Southwest Airlines introduced a 737-300 N334SW, “Shamu One”, painted to resemble a Killer Whale, representing the Sea World-Southwest Airlines promotional partnership. Southwest then introduced the tribute planes to the airline’s serving states, kicked off by “Lone Star One” 737-300 N352SW for the state of Texas on November 6, 1990. By this time, many airlines were recognizing that painting their own fleet as the flying billboard can be a strong marketing tools and even generates the revenues.
   The new era of colorful commercial fleets emerged and it drew me back into photographing airplanes after 25 years’ absence.
 

Updated : July 2, 2008

What's New
Very straightforward