PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Britannia Airways becomes Thomsonfly.com
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Old 10th May 2005, 15:57
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WHBM
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
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Nice bit of advertising blurb/PR Pangloss Autospeak there !

Thomson is a name associated with a cheapo/mid-range IT company, a dying market. Britannia was a well-regarded name associated with an airline, an expanding market, and they were one of the most-recognised names. And the new image is about projecting an airline rather than an IT company.

Thomson as a name had no connection with the low fares market at all. I accept that if Britannia was not available as a dot.comm name (and someone else seems to have got it) that would be an issue, though not insurmountable.

The new livery with the name "Thomsonfly.co.uk" written down the fuselage and interrupted by cabin windows, is far too easily confused with "Thomas Cook", written in similar style on a rival's aircraft. Any half-competent livery designer would have seen that in a moment.

The German owners appear to have got onto the change-for-changes sake bandwagon. This difficulty with German proprietors has happened before in the market. The owners engineer the takeover because they see the lower unit costs (significantly) of UK operators and want that benefit across their business, but they then get let down by their German managers who proceed to operate the UK subsidiary in their traditional over-centralised and bureaucratic manner, the cause of all the excess costs in the first place.
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