Let's Pretend

Let's pretend for a moment that you are the chieftain of an airline going through the throes of Chapter 11. You need to generate some excitement - something to help entice high paying passengers back into the air with you.

Now how many of you decided that the best way to do this was to repaint your aicraft? And for the one who did, did you decide to repaint into yet another version of the sterile "corporate" schemes?

Airline paint schemes used to be interesting. They were almost always multi-color with lots of color. Even the bare metal of Eastern and American was never boring.

But now all the airlines are out after the incredibly boring looking corporate schemes. United gave up its orange/blue/white scheme to go to a gray on gray to now go to a graduated straight blue stripe to on white? I'll grant them, it is one step above a whitetail with a name, but still.....

Oh, and before anyone decides to lecture me on the economics of all that paint work - remember Southwest still uses three seperate shades of orange and red on their aircraft that aren't painted like Shamu or the flag of Texas or some such thing. And Southwest is profitable. The weight of the paint is not the determining factor of the profitability of the airline. Service is.

And United would have been much better advised to spend their limited resources on improving their service (as would all the airlines).