Finnair Celebrates 85th Anniversary

Finnair -one of the world’s oldest airlines established in 1923- has turned 85 years old this year and is showing the airline world how such a birthday should be celebrated in true style.

Retro and Current Logos of Finnair

1. Retro Flights in Retro Livery Airplane

First of all painting one of the fleet (an Airbus A319) in the original livery from 85 years ago and naming it “Silver Bird” for years to come:

Finnair Airbus A319 in Retro Livery (c by Teemu Heikkonen on airliners.net)

Finnair is flying the “Silver Bird” from its home Helsinki-Vantaa airport to a number of locations all around Europe, but some of those flights between July 30 and December 31, 2008 are classified as Retro flights, with the crew wearing retro dresses as well. (if interested, read our earlier post about sexy stewardess uniforms.)

2. Retro Marketing on a Dedicated Retro Website

Setting up a special dedicated retro website for a month that looks like it was made out of paper and pack it with video commercials from earlier days (which still advertise the current brand…). Add the list of the above mentioned retro flights to it, (the list may change due to operational reasons of course) together with classic Retro style Destination Guides to the planned destinations: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, London, Manchaster, Milan, Oulu, Paris, Rome, Stockholm.

Retro Style Finnair 85th Anniversary Website

Link to Finnair Retro Commercials

Turning the main Finnair cover website to a Retro looking page with a single banner to the Retro site and a search module – to still allow people to get on with their business and make a booking.

Main cover page of Finnair in Retro Style

3. Celebrate the 10 year Alliance Membership with Further Special Livery Airplanes

And finally follow LAN Airlines and be the first European oneworld member to feature a special oneworld livery on the latest Airbus A340 addition to the longhaul fleet as well as on a shorthaul Airbus A319 – to celebrate the 10 year membership in oneworld.

Finnair special anniversary oneworld livery Airbus A340 (c by oneworld)

Very well done Finnair, this marketing campaign should be copied by others!! Besides the website and the retro commercial videos, having three special livery aircraft at the same time will have all plane-spotters around the world looking out for anniversary Finnair airplanes!

by balint01

Special Aircraft Paintings

Hungarian beauty queen, giant salmon, flying panda, Mickey Mouse, Santa hit by a plane. What do they have in common? They were all used by airlines for marketing purposes, thus as aircraft paintings they all made our blue sky more colorful. Following the success of our earlier post about Sexy Stewardess Uniforms, we collected the most extravagant aircraft paintings.

The outfit of the aircrafts is one of the most important image tool of all airlines. Although there have been some airlines that sold the aircraft’s body for commercial purposes, still aircraft paintings are used for image strengthening. Here are the best aircraft paintings.

Sky Europe – Zsuzsa Laky

Zsuzsa Laky was Miss Hungary and Miss Europe in 2003. Slovakian-based Sky Europe had a hub in Budapest (Hungary) as well, so they contracted her to promote Hungary as a destination. Her full body shape picture covered the side of a B737-700. Zsuzsa’s face was also used in 2003 and 2004 by the Hungarian Tourism Board on billboards all over Europe to promote Hungary.

Alaska Airlines – Salmon-Thirty-Salmon

Alaska Airlines is the biggest air cargo company delivering sea fishbetween Alaska and the mainland US and Alaska and Europe. To emphasize their role in sea food transportation, they painted a giant salmon on one of their aircrafts. The name of the aircraft is a word game. Instead of Seven-Thirty-Seven they called it Salmon-Thirty-Salmon. Nice idea. 🙂

Alaska Airlines – Make a wish

The giant salmon was not the only special livery at Alaska Airlines. Together with the “Make-a-wish” foundation they decorated an aircraft with Genie from the Disney movie Aladdin. Alaska Airlines supported the foundation by taking children to places they wished to travel. On the first flight of the plane featuring Genie six children travelled from Seattle to Disneyland in California.

All Nippon Airways – Fly! Panda

To celebrate 35 years of freindly relationship between China and Japan and the 20th anniversary of the Tokyo – Beijing flight, All Nippon Airways chose the character of a Panda to be painted on their aircraft. It is not just the outift of the aircraft, the interior and the uniform of the staff is also themed of the kind, black-and-white bear.

JAL – Dream Express

It was not just Alaska Airlines cooperating with Disney. JAL also painted 5 + 1 of its aircrafts “Disneyish”. The family members were the following: “Friends” with white background, “Sweet” with pink background, “Family” with blue background, 2 planes named “Tokyo Disney Sea” with blueish water-like background and the extra 6th plane with the nose of Mickey Mouse called “Dream story” and its livery is based on the story of an elementary school girl.

Lufthansa – Football World Championship

For Germany 2006 was a historical year. After its reunion the Football (soccer) World Championship was the biggest sport event, when they could finally show thw world they are a nation, they are good hosts and their team is again good at football. They started preparations a year before the event. One of the first visual promotion of the championship was that Lufthansa painted the nose of its Airbus aircrafts looking like a soccer ball.

Air Asia – Manchester United

Air Asia is a low cost airline in the Far-East, where Manchester United football (soccer) club is very popular. The marketing managers of Air Asia found it a good opportunity to aim at this target group by painting one of their aircrafts Manchester United-like. The aircraft was called the Red Devil Airbus and it featured the key players and the trainer of the famous British soccer club. The players painted on the plane were: Sir Alex Ferguson, Park Ji Sing, Wayne Rooney, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo, Alan Smith, Rio Ferdinand.

Christmas

Christmas – as all holidays – is one of the highest seasons in air travel. Airlines naturally prepare a lot for the holiday season. We can see Santa Claus livery on planes many times, especially on Finnair flights as Finnland is the official home of Santa. This is my favorite Santa painting, although I never managed to find out the airline itself.

And here is a collection of paintings not mentioned in the article.

By Szafi

Friday Fun – Good Airline Commercials I.

The following video collection is a bunch of good airline commercials. I think it’s not just me. We all love them. More airline commercials to the world! 🙂

KLM 1 – Swan taking off I really love this series. Swan is an elegant, still somehow very funny animal and a very remarkable figure for KLM. This commercial is simple and very funny.

KLM 2 – Swan landing I think this is the better part of th series.

KLM 3 – Ain’t no mountain high enough A perfect song, a perfect match for an airline that wants to communicate reliability. The song is about being there when our loved one needs us.

British Airways – Absolutely my favourite airline commercial. I saw a film about how they created it. it’s just perfect. Thousands of people are conducted to form a smiling face from air that immediately turns into a globe by taking off their top t-shirt. (They have 2 t-shirts on and the second one helps them form earth.

Finnair – animation. I like it very much. I saw it many times in different business lounges in Europe and it reminds me of that period.

To be continued next Friday. Stay with us! 🙂

By Szafi