British Airways Tails

RE: British Airways Tails

I think the British Airways tails are awful, the designs are quite honestly, crap! It looks like they hired a bunch of five year olds to do the work. Is BA run by a bunch of idiots?

Anyway, I’ll be back for another BA topic!!!

Signed,

The Anti-BA Boy

RE: British Airways Tails

Well, you may dislike the tails, but saying they are crap is not fair for all the designers, artists and painters who have made them. Don´t worry about what people say in other countries, because some others, like me, say sometimes “How brilliant and creative were these british to have painted the tails like that”.

RE: British Airways Tails

I think the tails are crap. There should be famous british inventions on the side to show everybody how good we really are.
We don’t want people from other countries thinking we are dumb.
I recon the first thing they say is “I hate those tails on the British Airways aeroplanes

RE: British Airways Tails

That B777 with the Hong Kong scheme was actually one of the first Herpa models I owned at it’s still one of my favourites. I’ve seen that the Scotland scheme is out now and I’ll go get it, too.

I’m sorry to see the tails disappearing and all the planes going back to a bland white body with no real own identity the way British Midland or Air2000 have.

RE: British Airways Tails

I found it interesting that the recent issue commented that, while you UK natives shed few tears on the phasing out of the World Image tails, the response was a bit more sympathetic from US opinions like mine.

I liked ’em!

Oh, mind you, I hated ’em when they first appeared. Not the tails to be honest but the bland fuselage livery….BA had joined the monotonous trend towards all white…the blue underbelly was barely noticable on the new livery and an almost insulting tribute to the previous livery, which I, like I’m sure most of you, felt was one of the all time greats. To me the tails made the airplane.

I understand the pride you folks have on flying the Union Jack aboard your national ‘ambassador’ if you will, but I felt the tails signified tremendous creativity….certainly years beyond the rather mundane liveries they tend to come up with here in the States (if they’re liveries at all….I am embarrassed to admit I live in the country that has perfected the flying billboard!)….as a resident of Dallas and a frequent visitor(and passenger) zipping in and out of DFW Airport, I can tell you no one..NO ONE…notices 50 American airplanes sitting at the gate, no matter how shiny they are. Now 50 airplanes with almost as many different tail designs. That gets people talking.

Your permanent choice…the Trafalgar battle flag…looks very sharp. But I’ll never forget the day a few months back when I was walking across the parking lot of a huge shopping mall that happens to lay under the short finals to DFWs many runways…there above me a gorgeous BA 777 with the Hong Kong ‘script’ on the tail. What a sight! I followed it for a good three minutes, watching it sink onto the concrete. As fate would have it, only a few minutes later I was in a hobby shop in the mall that was selling Herpa’s replica of the same airplane!

Needless to say, it has a place of honor on my display shelf!

RE: British Airways Tails

being, like most of you maybe, a plane spotter, i was well impressed with the majority of the new 50? fin markings. one airline with 50? different opportunities to shoot each plane was a thrill just thinking about it! but of course BA didn’t really have 50 great schemes did they? a lot were great, a lot were rubbish. the “new” concorde scheme is quite smart though, reminisent of pre-coat of arms livery nearly.

RE: British Airways Tails

You have to give credit to BA for trying something different, and I did like some of the tail images. Having said that, it would be next to impossible to find one person that liked every single one of them.

The union flag scheme, which is now the standard, is fairly average. I wasn’t too keen on the coat of arms logo of the eighties either – It looked dark and dirty in certain light.

The airline has an identity crisis at present and the union flag is an attempt to keep us British happy. I’m British and I’m not happy. The new speed marque is not good either.

My solution? BA need a totally new livery and they need it quickly. Other airlines have brought out improved liveries to replace an unpopular new look, eg Delta, Sabena – Air India unveiled a new livery in the early nineties and decided to go back to the old one when people complained!

British Airways Tails

I remember the first time I flew to London on board a new British Airways 747-400 from JFK the first thing that struck me about the airline was the livery. In particular I LOVED the tail design because it possessed a dignified, stately look that was “very British”. With this design you could ALWAYS point out a British Airways aircraft during the busy international times at airports worldwide (and I have been to my fair share) When the new tail designs came out I was very dissapointed as many others were. There was a loss of uniformity amongst the fleet and it didn’t appear like there was an airline anymore. The new livery, the Union Jack livery, is better than it’s predesessor but pales in comparison to the original. In my opinion British Airways is like another AA, they could have kept the same livery for years and years. Of course the BA livery is MUCH nicer than that of AA. I suppose we’ll all have to live with the new look.

RE: British Airways Tails

I’ve been following this thread (as I’ve followed the “tails debate” since the day of the launch) with not a little amusement.

Those interested have always divided into three main camps:

The Britain is Great camp, who side with Margaret Thatcher and think the tails an abomination.

The How Innovative Brigade who like the flair encompassed in the idea, if not the total set of tails.

The Let’s Keep Everything Smart Set who want a return to the previous scheme.

From each of these camps are then drawn new found supporters of the Chatham Historic Dockyard scheme (the correct title of the latest abomination).

I was at Heathrow when the new schemes were unveiled. The whole ethos was to push BA’s commitment as a world carrier, THE leader in the One World Alliance and, as almost 50% of all passengers carried by BA are not British, give a both a global appeal and a focus for local advertising around the world.

P R disaster number one was the Heathrow launch. Whilst elsewhere some of the less radical designs were launched someone, presumably Ayling, used the South African design which, to British eyes, is a meaningless jumble of colours and is, apart from Animals and Trees, the poorest of the whole lot.

Of course the media latched onto this immediately, contrasting it unfavourably with the Concorde in the Chatham scheme, (itself a very weak white fuselage scheme lacking even the subtle cheatline of the previous paint job) and these became “the new BA look” in the eyes of the public.

Disaster number two was BA trying to defend the schemes. Instead of going all out with promotions in Britain and around the world to push the One World theme, BA immediately went on the defensive in its presentations (both public and private) and was put on the back foot when it was revealed that the cost of repaints would be £60 million, at a time when it was shedding staff and making cut backs (though the cost was to be spread over many years of scheduled repainting).

The positive, up-beat promotion never really happened and the whole thing got bogged down in recriminations, including Thatcher’s stupid outburst at the Tory conference which got far more air time than any has been politician should have got, and the whole idea became tainted and added to the woes which ended in Ayling’s departure.

The whole episode was a mess highlighting poor management decisions, lack of control by the Board and a very definite lack of proper market research in the home market.

As for the current scheme, it is nothing more than a cheap patch up to pander to the flag wavers. BA is NOT Britain’s national airline. Since privatisation, whatever the management like to think or the press say, there is NO official flag carrier. All British airlines should carry the flag (and the EU flag come to that). BA has shown by its actions that it is only really interested in the London market and the Shuttles which feed it.

To those who say multi colour schemes can’t work, you are both wrong and right. Braniff had years of success with its various Flying Colors designs from 1965 to the early 1980s. No one in the U S has anything but good to say about Frontier’s animal tails and a little airline in Vancouver, Pacific Coastal, sports local landmarks and pictures of local activities on the tails of its B1900s, EMB110s, Shorts 360s etc and everyone is very proud of this.

On the other hand, Mexicana’s multi ethnic tail schemes were quickly reduced to four and any engineer will tell you that non- matching rudders can become a nightmare (Braniff got around this by having enough 727s (for instance) to carry spares in the right colour.

Finally, a word to thoe who liked the “coat of arms design”. Yes, it had dignity, a certain Britishness etc. which appealed to a percentage of travellers but, when test marketed amongst most travellers by BA, it was thought of as outdated, redolent of Empire and too dirty (the grey top).

RE: British Airways Tails

I personally did like some of the tails, some of them were very stylish designs, it was just that BA tried to do too much too soon.What was really silly about the world liveries was the fact that they had Aborigine designs flying round scotland, and Norwegian designs flying to Hong Kong. I don’t like the new livery particularly, It barely looks like the Union Jack and to me looks more like a tatty rag….which is not how I like to think of an airline, especially one as large as BA. The more effective liveries from round the world are the simple ones, Qantas comes to mind here with its red tail & White Kangaroo, it looks great even after 15 years in the sky, it is instantly recognisable and if you go to Sydney Airport and see all those tails in Red you’ll know what I mean. I think that the most effective liveries around the world are
Qantas
Egypt Air
Sabena
Emirates
Korean
South African Airways
Lan Chile
And if you look at these liveries they’re all very simple, but striking.

RE: British Airways Tails

I totally agree with everything you have said.
I have heard that these silly and inappropriate tail designs are costing around £60 million each.
I wouldn’t mind if they put famous british inventions on the side but silly pictures of flowers does not represent anything particuarly british.
Why can’t we show other countries just how GREAT we are by portraying britain on our tails.

RE: British Airways Tails

LAST EDITED ON 24-Aug-00 AT 06:56 PM (GMT)[p]I thought that the ethnic scheme was a big PR and marketing disaster. The Nelson flag scheme is my preferred scheme for BA – it is modern whilst retaining the historical link.

RE: British Airways Tails

The multi ethnic tails made good looking aircraft look like cheap flying beach towels. The union flag has real presence, and why not since the airline is called British Airways. To many people across the world the “British” bit means quality service and realibilty, why change it. My only gripe with BA at present is that fact they they don’t seem to be putting the in flight map up on the video screen on international flights. It’s nice to know where you are, part of the excitment of flying. In fact BA’s inflight broadcasts are not that great at all.

RE: British Airways Tails

I think that British Airways new livery looks so much better, and more modern. The old livery looks dated and dull. I liked some of the World tail designs especially the Poole one and the Celtic one, but others looked awful.
It is so good to see the union jack back on BA planes, because a national airline should bear its countrys colours, and be part of Britains identity. Needless to say I am still very fond of the BOAC livery, after all the years.
As for delayed BA flights on Teletext, I live in Northern Ireland and most BA flights from Belfast Aldergrove are heavily delayed Heathrow bound, and vice versa.

RE: British Airways Tails

I’ll say upfront that I’m American and have never flown British Airways or even been to Britain (though I have traveled a bit on the Continent). I thought the “world” paint schemes were very nice and bold, particularly in comparison to the absolutely bland paint schemes of U.S. airlines: airline initials, hideous color choices, and the rest. While I can understand the point about an airline having a single image, just like any other corporation, I doubt many air travelers give a second thought to what’s painted on the tail when making a choice of which airline to fly.

RE: British Airways Tails

at first i liked the tail designes but this was from an enthusiasts point of view for photography purposes, i agree with most other comments that it was a mistake and lowered B.As image,
but i do like the new union flag design which i think should be applied to all the aircraft eventually. B.A. is still, in my opinion a great airline, very professionally run, and if you look at teletext flight arrival pages, not many flights arrive late…..check it out.

RE: British Airways Tails

I really like multi-cultural art, I’m fascinated with languages, live abroad, and work in an environment of over 70 nationalities. One would think that I’d take a fancy to the ethnic art on the tails but as an airline enthusiast I’ve never been able to say that I like what I’ve seen.

The only way to appreciate the variety of tail designs is to see several BA planes in one environment. Unfortunately, the typical international airport has just one British Airways plane on the ground at a time. The assumption by those who see the plane is that ALL BA planes have the same design, and therefore the entire corporate image is attached to a peculiar piece of artwork which rarely has anything to do with the front of the aircraft.

I love the concept. I hate the reality.
Buzz

RE: British Airways Tails

I totaly agree. These designs of the BA aircrafts has spoilt the image of BA at least in India. I think one tail theme is the recoginisation idol for an airline and BA is not keeping that in mind.

cheers

RE: British Airways Tails

I thing the World Image was one of the most original and fantastic idea one airline ever had. Although in the UK it wasn´t popular, many european travellers liked this more cosmopolitan image. Art is never cheap or tatty. I should the artistic designs of many famous artists should be much more respected. I find totally wrong trying to make patriotism and waving the national flag to show one airline is more or less “national”. As far as I am concerned I dislike the new livery so much that I have changed to BD because, besides being a good British airline, its like a breath of fresh air. Removing the ethnic designs is a big smack to international passangers.
It´simply an oppinion
wishes

RE: British Airways Tails

I feel that BA has made itself a laughing stock with the utopia images, I have met very few people that have liked the tail logo’s. Indeed, I got the shock of my life when I saw a BA regional 737 at Birmingham about eighteen months ago – It looked as though someone let a 4 year old with a giant pack of crayola loose on the tailplane. Some of the images were OK (Blue Poole), but most were bloomin’ awful. The Union flag logo has received a much better response, and I like it very much. The aircraft look very smart with this logo, especially the 747’s and 777’s. I know one thing though, BA won’t remain a laughing stock forever, and it will ride out the financial storm it currently resides in. I still think it is a fantastic airline, albeit one which made a mistake back in 1997. Time to forgive and forget.