Just in time for Halloween, another zombie Pan Am is rising from the dead. The newest incarnation—the fifth—plans to start flying cargo flights to South America in 2011. The airline’s brand-new logo is not as iconic as the blue meatball designed by Edward L. Barnes in the 1950s.
Archive for October, 2010
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Friday, October 29th, 2010URL
Friday, October 29th, 2010How will the merged United Airlines roll out its new brand? It’s starting with the in-flight safety video, now common to both United and Continental. The video features, to my mind, a particularly unfortunate application of Rhapsody in Blue.
The day the industry changed
Sunday, October 24th, 2010
Most people will tell you that the airline industry changed 32 years ago today—the day Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act.
In fact, there are some people who will tell you that October 24, 1978 was the day everything that ever has changed or ever will change in the airline industry, changed.
Not me. For my money, the day the industry changed was 20 years ago, when Young & Rubicam resigned Trans World Airlines. (more…)
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Friday, October 22nd, 2010Still, the Branded Skies collection of wings pales in comparison to this: Dieter Kapsch has collected 1,760 spoons from 447 airlines.
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Thursday, October 21st, 2010In celebration of the 250th pair of wings added to the Fly the Branded Skies collection, you can now see images of the cards they came on—at least for all the wings in the collection that have cards.
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Thursday, October 21st, 2010How do you come back from a string of crashes and being banned from flying to Europe due to safety concerns? Shashank Nigam has a few ideas for Garuda Indonesia.
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Tuesday, October 19th, 2010Southwest Airlines is planning to go after the cancellation and change fees other airlines charge in an upcoming advertising campaign. Yet again, Southwest is hitting other carriers where it hurts: those fees brought in $1.2 billion in revenue for the U.S. airline industry in the first half of this year. (via Gadling)
God is my co-pilot
Monday, October 18th, 2010
The chief executive and employees of Frontier Airlines are God-fearin’ people. That’s one of the main takeaways from this evening’s episode of “Undercover Boss,” which featured Republic Airways CEO Bryan Bedford praying, listening to employees, praying, having dinner with his family, praying, wearing a ridiculous wig, praying, talking to employees about their faith, and praying.
This isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with being a person of faith. But it does suggest appearing on “Undercover Boss” isn’t really as risky as some people say. In fact, it’s probably one of the cushiest PR opportunities out there, letting CEOs be conspicuously magnanimous during a full hour of prime-time network television. Shortly after the episode ended, the Frontier Airlines Web site appeared to crash—perhaps brought down by thousands of travelers seeking out the airline’s “Undercover Fares” sale. (more…)
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Friday, October 15th, 2010Shelby White traces the history of the Swissair logo. It’s always fascinating to see corporate design manuals, especially ones from the 1960s.