liveries

Southwest Airlines celebrates Shark Week

Contests, liveries,

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

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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

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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.

 

 

Hawaiian Airlines livery and logo get a refresh

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Hawaiian Airlines updated a refreshed logo and livery – showing off the new artwork on a Boeing 717 jet at Honolulu International Airport on Monday, which was – appropriately enough – Lei Day, an annual celebration of Hawaiian culture.

The new livery (shown on an A330 in the mock-up above) raises, just a bit, the prominence of Pualani (Flower of the Sky) – the woman whose face is seen on the airplane tails – and adds a silver lei that wraps around the body of the aircraft.

Old and new Pualani images are below:

 

More than 50 planes in the Hawaiian Airlines fleet will eventually feature the new design.

This short video is a nice description of the meaning of Pualiani and how the airline approached updating the images – making them ‘more Hawaiian.’

 

 

 

Painted planes: a sea turtle for ANA; Bad Badtz-Maru for Eva Air

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Japan’s All Nippon Airways – ANA – is getting its first Airbus A380 and will introduce it on the  Tokyo-Honolulu route starting spring 2019.  When it does, the plane will be painted to look like an endangered  Hawaiian green sea turtle (‘Honu’ in Hawaiian) – which is a symbol of luck and prosperity.

The “FLYING HONU” design was chosen from more than 2,000 contest submissions and the winner received a pair of round-trip business class tickets between Tokyo and Honolulu.

In announcing the special livery, ANA said it will also be supporting activities in Hawaii to protect the Hawaiian green sea turtle and will introduce yet-to-be-finalized new passengers services for the plane and the route.

 

Meanwhile, earlier this month EVA Air launched a new “Travel Fun” Sanrio character-jet adorned with the character Bad Badtz-Maru that will be flying on the Taipei-Fukuoka and Taipei-Seoul routes.

The Airbus A330-300 is the first to fly internationally with a Bad Badtz-Maru livery and shows a vacation-ready Bad Badtz-Maru and some of his friends, along with hats, a camera, snacks and other items.