liveries

Still time to help Brussels Airlines choose a special livery

Brussels Airlines has planes with special paint jobs celebrating four Belgian icons (Rackham, Magritte, Trident and Amare), and has a contest underway till the end of August inviting suggestions for a fifth.

Here are just a few of the suggestions that have been submitted so far. There’s still time to send in your own.

Smurfs!

 

The Atomium – a cool leftover from the World’s Fair held in Brussels in 1958.

And of course, a version of the famous Mannekin Pis statue:

Have a better idea? Be sure to send it in.

Brussels Airlines contest for a new special livery

Brussels Airlines has a special livery series going featuring icons from Belgian culture.
They’ve painted Airbus A320s to honor the surrealist painter René Magritte and created a special livery to look like the shark submarine from the Tintin story, “Red Rackham’s Treasure.”

 

The other specially painted planes include Trident, the official plane of Belgium’s national soccer team, the Red Devils, and Amare,  dedicated to the Belgian music festival called Tomorrowland,

Now the airline is ready to create a livery for the fifth plane in the series and seeking nominations for the new theme from the public.

Anyone with an idea for which Belgium icon image should be celebrated on the next plane is invited to send in idea.

A jury of well-known Belgians will pick two finalists and then the public will get to vote on the winner. The person whose idea is chosen will get to go behind the scenes to follow the process of painting the design on the plane and get to fly on the maiden voyage of the freshly-painted aircraft sometime in March 2018.

Deadline to submit ideas is August 21, 2017. Here are more details on how to enter the Brussels Airlines contest.

Stuck at The Airport  wishes you good luck!

 

Southwest Airlines celebrates Shark Week

Shark Week is coming to the Discovery Channel July 23 – July 30 and, once again, Southwest Airlines is jumping in with a shark-themed 737-700 featuring five shark species on the fuselage.

 

The shark plane will fly through Aug. 31, 2017, but on all WiFi-equipped Southwest planes passengers will be able to watch a pre-premiere episode of African Shark Safari on the on demand Shark Week channel.

During Shark Week, passengers can watch the programming live on the Discovery Channel.

And to kick off Shark Week, Southwest and Discovery are planning to do a surprise takeover of a special flight.

Shark fan or not, you might want to enter the Dare to Dive sweepstakes to  Grand Cayman.
The prize includes round trip travel for the winner and three guests,  a $2,000 Ritz Carlton gift card, and a $1,000 Visa gift card for an aquatic adventure. Enter by July 31, 2017. Good luck!

 

Looking for special liveries at Brussels Airport

Greetings from Brussels Airport, where I’ve been on the look-out for Brussels Airlines’ Magritte-themed plane.

The plane was introduced in March 2016 as part of a series dedicated to Belgian icons. Also in the series: planes celebrating characters from Tintin, the classic comic-book character by author and illustrator Hergé; the Belgian Red Devils soccer team; and the country’s Tomorrowland music festival.

So far – I haven’t spotted any of these. But there’s still a half hour before my flight

 

Icelandair’s cool new glacier themed airplane

Photo by Harriet Baskas

Icelandair which names all its planes after Icelandic volcanoes, has launched a glacier themed Boeing 757-200 named Vatnajökull, in honor of the Vatnajökull glacier, which is home to three active volcanoes.

To celebrate, Icelandair filled the plane with employees, guests and journalists – including me – and on May 13 set off for a quick, one-hour flight between Kefklavik Airport near Reykjavik and Egilsstaoir Airport, with a route that went right over the glacier the plane is named after.

 

Before we left, guests were invited to Icelandair’s new Saga club lounge at the Keflavik Airport, where a chunk of ice from the glacier was on display.

Photo: Harriet Baskas

Weather kept passengers from actually seeing the glacier during our flight – not unusual, according to the captain – but that didn’t really matter because there are plenty of glacier features on this plane – starting with the paint job, which was spray painted by hand.

Photo: Harriet Baskas

courtesy Icelandair

Inside, there are plenty of glacier themed items as well; everything from ambient LED blue lighting, to headrests, drink cups, napkins, chocolates, amenity kits and airsickness bags.

Headrests – photo Harriet Baskas

Glacier note in airplane restroom – photo Harriet Baskas

Tin Icelandair menity kit cover – photo Harriet Baskas

Airsickness bag – photo Harriet Baskas

You can learn more about Icelandair’s new glacier themed plane, see which routes it is flying and which airports it will stop and, better yet, put in a request for the plane to come to your town, here.

While the glacier themed plane is cool, it’s not Icelandair’s only special livery. In 2015, the airline rolled out the Hekla Aurora, which was inspired by the northern lights.