Names on BA aircraft

[Hussar 54]

For no other reason than to settle a bet with a colleague....

Can anyone confirm, please. the last flight by a BA aircraft which carried a fleet name.

My colleague reckons that it would be one of the 747-400s....I reckon it would be one of the remaining 767s.

On the other hand, I suppose we're both probably wrong.

Thanks in Advance.

[Innominate]

Not entirely sure what you mean by "fleet name" but 747-436 G-CIVF, named City of St Albans, is currently over Canada, heading for LAX.

[Hussar 54]

Sorry for the confusion....What I meant was BA's equivalent naming of aircraft in the same way as Pan AM's famous ' Clippers '.

In the case of G-CIVF, it carried the name City of St Albans on the outside of the fuselage when it was flying in BA's previous blue / grey scheme, but I don't think it does now, no ?

So I'm assuming that when the BA aircraft were repainted into the current blue / white scheme, the ' fleet names ' were not painted on to the outside of the fuselage and the ' fleet names ' tradition quietly disappeared. Same thing happened at AF and AZ, which is what got us round to discussing BA as another example.

So I suppose the answer to my own question is that it would probably be which was the last BA aircraft to fly in the old blue / grey colour scheme before either being retired or repainted, perhaps.

[Warmtoast]

Not a last flight, but for B-747 436 G-BNLP "City of Aberdeen"
See my post here on PPRuNe:
https://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/363671-plaque-b-747-436-g-bnlp.html#post4745681


WT

[jensdad]

Not entirely sure what you mean by "fleet name" but 747-436 G-CIVF, named City of St Albans, is currently over Canada, heading for LAX.


I had no idea that BA still gave some of their aircraft names! Is G-CIVF a one off , or are there more? I have only ever flown on their Airbuses recently and haven't noticed any names, but then again there aren't enough counties, rivers, bays or cities in the UK to give the entire Airbus fleet a name these days.

[DaveReidUK]

I had no idea that BA still gave some of their aircraft names!

I think we've established that they don't!

[El Bunto]

B744 G-CIVA officially named and marked as "victoRIOus", August 2016

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqAITs0WcAAtAJb.jpg:small

It was only a decal but still a name! For reference the other options put up for vote were:
Gold Force One
Golden Hauls
Mission Accomplished

[Reverserbucket]

I thought they were all called 'Chatham Historic Shipyard' these days? :}

[jensdad]

I think we've established that they don't!
I'm not sure that we have, Dave. Innominate has just said that G-CIVF is named 'City of St. Albans'. And Hussar 54 replied that he or she doesn't think that it is so named now, but isn't sure.


Consensus is that they don't carry names on the outside of the fuselage but do they carry anything inside the cabin?

[wub]

From a thread in the BA FlyerTalk forum in 2016:

Aircraft names disappeared with the Landor livery.
A320s: British Islands, eg. Isle of Jura
737s: British rivers, eg River Tamar, Thames, Spey etc
747s: British cities, eg City of Norwich, Edinburgh etc
757s: British castles, eg Windsor and Dover Castle
767s: European cities, eg City of Luxembourg
777s: Commonwealth aviators, eg Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith
ATPs: Gaelic stuff
HS-748s: Scottish Glens, eg Glen Fiddich
BAC1-11s: British counties, eg County of Cheshire
L1011s: Princesses or Roses (not sure which), eg Margaret Rose, 1.8 Vanden Plas
Tridents: nameless, possibly because they never formally made it into the Landor scheme

Seemingly the aircrafts’ names are still on plaques on the flight decks

[jensdad]

Thanks for that, wub. So it appears that some aircraft do still have names, but just not on the outside of the fuselage!

[TCU]

https://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/563353-british-airways-aircraft-names.html?highlight=BA+aircraft+names

[wiggy]

Seemingly the aircrafts’ names are still on plaques on the flight decks


There are things like registration, selcal code and sometimes owned by/leased by plaques dotted around the flight deck but the only place I’ve ever seen the name is on a plaque in the cabin (and only on some airframes).
,

[DaveReidUK]

I'm not sure that we have, Dave. Innominate has just said that G-CIVF is named 'City of St. Albans'. And Hussar 54 replied that he or she doesn't think that it is so named now, but isn't sure.

Perhaps Innominate could enlighten us as to the source of his/her information?

[El Bunto]

No external name on G-CIVF as of August 2017 at the latest.

[Hussar 54]

Thanks everyone....

I don't suppose we'll ever solve this one other than to perhaps reason that probably the last BA plane with a/its name on the fuselage was the last one to fly in the blue / grey colour scheme - and it will need a really, really keen historian to be able tell us that, because although we could use the details in the vey helpful link provided by TCU to identify when each individual aircraft was withdrawn from service or sold on by BA, we wouldn't know whether it had been repainted or not by the time it left the fleet.

Just to add another variable - a friend in the UK who is a retired BA Capt mailed me to say he is absolutely sure that the type would be one of the first three ( non-ER ) 777s which were delivered in the blue / grey colour scheme so would have been among the last aircraft to be repainted in about 2001 or so.

But a bet's a bet, so a dig around the net and it's suggested that by 2002 of the whole fleet only a couple of 747s were still in the blue / grey colour scheme, interestingly both still active - G-CIVD and G-CIVJ.

I can't find anything about the dates the 767s and those 777s were repainted, so it looks as though the answer will most probably be one of those two 747s - G-CIVD or G-CIVJ - but I don't suppose we'll ever find out for sure, and I'm almost certainly €25 poorer than I was yesterday morning.

Edited to add - the list that TCU linked to indicates that G-CIVJ remained un-named......So it looks as though G-CIVD was the last.