Spanair wishes the passengers on its last flight on Christmas Eve a very merry Christmas, with help from the Spanish agency Shackleton. For my money, no agency does this type of thing better than they do. Thoroughly charming.
Archive for December, 2010
URL
Thursday, December 30th, 2010Political animals
Monday, December 27th, 2010
Last week, American Airlines pulled its flights from Orbitz in a dispute over fees. That means more passengers will have to use the carrier’s Web site to book travel directly. But American’s Web site has long been controversial — just ask interface designer Dustin Curtis.
There. How’s that for a news hook for an 18-month-old story? In fairness, this blog didn’t exist when Curtis launched his attack on American’s Web site in May of 2009. The lessons from that story, however, are timeless.
Before American launched a new Web site in mid-November, their homepage really hadn’t changed in almost a decade. It showed. The site was cluttered. Dated. Ugly. This is the site Curtis arrived at in 2009, and the site he trashed in a subsequent blog post. (more…)
Designed for you?
Monday, December 20th, 2010
Look at the image above. Do you see an airplane? Look closer. You may just barely be able to make it out. This is the same airplane that, some day soon, will buried in snow on the tarmac in Helsinki and not found again until spring (which I believe takes place for 15 minutes in July if you’re in Helsinki.)
Today, Finnair announced a new, €10-million rebranding as part of its strategic plan to expand in Asia. The airline wants to be the number one airline in the Nordic countries, and in the top three airlines in Asian traffic.
Why safety isn’t safe
Friday, December 17th, 2010
You’re looking at the stupidest airline ad ever produced.
On April 28, 1967, Pacific Air Lines ran this full page ad in the New York Times. It was created by advertising (and comedy) legend Stan Freberg in a bid to bring some honesty to airline advertising. But while the ad may have been honest, it didn’t do much good for Pacific Air Lines.
It is not true, as is often reported, that the ad drove Pacific Air Lines into bankruptcy two months later. In fact, Pacific merged with two other carriers to form Air West, and the forces that compelled the merger had little to do with advertising. But the ad did, within days, cost the jobs of the airline’s vice president of marketing and its director of advertising, and it quickly became notorious.
URL
Wednesday, December 15th, 2010The employees of United have spoken: the winner of the retrojet contest is the Friend Ship livery from the early 1970s. The classic colours will be painted on an A320 sometime next year.