Ask the pilot

Who cares what planes look like? I do! Why do they have to look so ugly and boring?

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Flying, Design, Airlines, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

Aug. 29, 2008 | This column was slated to run in last week's slot, sidetracked at the last minute by the plane crash in Spain. Apologies to those of you hoping for something newsier -- oh gawd, not another rant about liveries and aesthetics! -- but hey, it's a holiday weekend and I'm trying to keep it light.

We begin with a quote: "Who cares what it looks like?"

That was the sentiment of a certain David W in Salon's letters section two weeks ago, responding to my opinion that the goliath new Airbus, the A380, is possibly the ugliest commercial jetliner ever built.

"I spend my time inside the aircraft and not outside," David continues. "I don't care what the A380 looks like; if it's big then maybe passengers will have more room and the economy class nightmare won't be so bad."

True, perhaps, on that latter point, but I'm having a hard time with the premise. I passionately submit that it does, absolutely, matter what the airplane looks like. Call me a biased, old-fashioned romantic (I'm guilty on all three counts), but I like to think of the jetliner as something loftier -- both literally and figuratively -- than a mere vehicle, and thus deserving of the same aesthetic seriousness bestowed across a wide range of industrial design. Obviously this is nothing specific to aviation, but a point that speaks to design in general: Do we not care what our bridges and skyscrapers look like, functionality aside? Of course we do.

If you ask me, David's opinion is symptomatic of the public's all-but-vanished appreciation for air travel. Flying has become so routine, and so uncomfortable, that few people stop to consider the impressiveness of soaring thousands of feet over the ocean, at hundreds of miles per hour, in a machine that cost tens of millions of dollars ... in nearly absolute safety, to boot. So what, the thinking goes. Just get me there quickly (and cheaply).

Then again, we shouldn't be too hard on David, considering not only the beastliness of the A380's silhouette but the steps most airlines have been taking to ensure that all of their jetliners appear as unattractive as possible. In a lot of ways, a plane is only as attractive as the paint job applied to it, and the state of airline liveries has been devolving ever more rapidly. One by one, it seems, the industry's handsomest looks are being usurped by remakes that are flashy, gimmicky or just plain vulgar.

Consider the latest at US Airways. Out went the smoky gray, clever red accenting and elegant typeface. In, a spiritless, blue and white base with a childish red stripe. (The design was meant to celebrate the 2005 merger between US Airways and America West. The flag and font are US Airways; the lightly sprayed fuselage jags are America West. Couldn't they just have given every employee a watch? It smacks of down-market and cheap -- an affiliation no airline should want.)

Then we have the ruin of Air India. The sexy tail swoosh and Taj Mahal-ian window frames have become this manic mess. Like so many schemes of late, it attempts too much, trying to be at once understated and distinctive. In the end, it's just sloppy.

Or, have a gander at the brand-new EgyptAir. Not that the scheme it replaces was anything special, but here is the perfect example of everything that is wrong with airline branding so far in the 21st century. Truly awful, it looks like the uniform for an arena football team.

Colombia's national carrier is one of the oldest airlines in existence. But what, exactly, is evoked by this? Nothing, best anybody can tell, beyond the possible self-satisfaction of the artists. And don't get me started on AeroMexico, which has adopted that lowest common denominator of brand identity, the "generic meaningless swoosh thing."

That was a term coined by Amanda Collier, a graphic design veteran quoted in one of this column's earlier discussions of airline color schemes. According to Collier, "the GMST is what happens when any corporation gathers senior management, their internal creative department, and a design agency in order to develop a new logo. The managers will talk about wanting something that shows their company is 'forward thinking' and 'in motion,' and no fewer than three of them will reference Nike, inventors of the original Swoosh. The creative types smile, nod, secretly stab themselves with their X-Acto knives, and shit out variations on a motion theme until everyone gets tired of arguing about it."

In the end, too many people are left asking the question they should never be asking: "What airline is that?" I hate to say it, but in their attempts to seem modern and progressive, carriers have been undermining, and even outright destroying, their own brand identities. In some cases, globally recognized icons were thrown aside and replaced by crude knockoffs. It's hard to say which is the most offensive example, but I'll point to two:

First and foremost was the retiring of the Japan Airlines crane emblem. This timeless classic -- the bird gracefully lifting its wings into the suggestion of a rising sun -- became this truncated glob (or, if you will, the "rising splotch").

Almost as tragic was the bastardization of Northwest's "NW" compass logo. It was an N; it was a W; it was a compass pointing toward the northwest. It was all of those things, and perhaps the single best trademark ever created by Landor Associates. The new version is neither an N nor a W. It's just an arrow sticking out of a circle.

Which is all right, I suppose, given that Northwest's planes will soon be sporting the red and blue widget of Delta, whose newest presentation (Delta's fourth revision in 10 years) is a bit ... um ... er ... uh ... yawn.

Next page: The only thing worse than an ugly paint job is an ugly paint job and an ugly airplane