Airlines that adopted another's livery [Archive]

ATNotts

1st May 2023, 12:49

Inspired by the Viscount thread running at the moment Channel Aiways adopted Continental's then colour scheme when they purchased their Viscount 810 fleet, and went on to use it on their Trident and 1-11 fleets.

More recently Jet2 has adopted the Allegiant scheme for their 'Holidays' aircraft.

Are there historical examples? I think the yellow livery that Northeast (UK) used before they were absorbed into British Airways was at least loosely based on their American namesake. Apart from that I can't recall any other instances.

treadigraph

1st May 2023, 15:01

I seem to recall an American buying several DC-6s for hauling freight out of Miami. He also hired some ex-USAF mechanics to look after his fleet and instructed them to come up with a paint job - so he ended up with a quasi-MATS scheme.

Aviateca leased a Court 1-11 and adopted their scheme for a while?

Airbanda

1st May 2023, 15:08

Aviateca leased a Court 1-11 and adopted their scheme for a while?

That's not the same thing though. Throughout the seventies Aer Lingus 737-204 EI-ASH overwintered in Canada and spent the summer here in that operator's colours with a Shamrock on the tail.

Tomjet/Sunwing have some hybrid liveries too I think.

Was it Flying Colours* that shared a brace of 757s with BA in the mid eighties? I was working in Brentford at the time and would see them going past the office window on a regular basis in some sort of hybrid scheme.

*Not Flying Colours as the timeframe is wrong.

treadigraph

1st May 2023, 15:58

It wasn't just the leased 1-11 they had in that scheme, several other aircraft including their own 1-11s were painted in the same manner. They seem to change scheme several times over the years.

BSD

1st May 2023, 15:58

Fokker produced a scheme for an F27 which I think was the maritime patrol version.

Not long after, Mike Keegan introduced Heralds to BAF which he'd acquired a little earlier.

Their first Heralds rolled out of the hangar with a remarkably similar paint scheme.....

eckhard

1st May 2023, 16:05

That's not the same thing though. Throughout the seventies Aer Lingus 737-204 EI-ASH overwintered in Canada and spent the summer here in that operator's colours with a Shamrock on the tail.

Tomjet/Sunwing have some hybrid liveries too I think.

Was it Flying Colours* that shared a brace of 757s with BA in the mid eighties? I was working in Brentford at the time and would see them going past the office window on a regular basis in some sort of hybrid scheme.

*Not Flying Colours as the timeframe is wrong.
It was Air Europe I think.

Mooncrest

1st May 2023, 17:39

Kabo Air, a Nigerian airline from decades ago, bought the Air Inter Caravelle fleet and left them virtually unchanged.

Liffy 1M

1st May 2023, 19:16

Kabo Air, a Nigerian airline from decades ago, bought the Air Inter Caravelle fleet and left them virtually unchanged.

Kabo Air had more aircraft in the modified livery of a previous operator than in their own scheme, I think.

Another Nigerian carrier, Okada Air, acquired several BAC 1-11s from BCAL and the livery worn resembled BCAL's, but with the lower stripe in navy blue. Other aircraft types in the fleet adopted this scheme also

WHBM

1st May 2023, 19:35

Copa, the mainstream airline of Panama, has long had a dead ringer livery from United in the USA. But that's not AH&N.

161,200+ Copa Airlines Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free Images - iStock (istockphoto.com) (https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/copa-airlines)

SWBKCB

1st May 2023, 19:41

TCU

1st May 2023, 20:33

SAS were a significant shareholder in the foundation of what we now know as Thai, and supplied early aircraft, notably swapping the Scandinavian dragon headed longship cheat line motif for a (very) slightly more exotic asian dragon head on the Thai aircraft...oh and a red lower cheat line.

rog747

2nd May 2023, 04:47

Aviateca leased a Court Line 1-11 1970/71 and adopted their colour scheme for their new build BAC 1-11 500 - then later they leased another Court Line a/c, but did not adopt the OU livery on any other of their fleet.

Vacationair Canada adopted Air Europe's livery on their 737-200's.

We all thought at the time it was the usual seasonal 737 swaps that AE OM and KT did with US and Canadian Airlines but not so with Vacationair.

It could be said that Inex Adria adopted Alitalia's striped livery for their new DC-9's but the evidence is not to hand.

North American Airlines resembles Caledonian Airways (1988) and looks remarkably similar on their 757's and 767's

And obviously both Air Europe and Air Europa shared liveries' with Air Europa keeping the UK parent's livery for some years after their demise in 1991.
Air 2000 and Canada 3000 were the same too, with Canada 3000 keeping their original livery to their demise.
Of course all of these airlines had ''connections' at the formation of their lives, so not 'copied' as such.

.....

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/1024x657/60906_1043429518_491eeee0f3504b99cfeec6378aa3042d38861f2f.jp g
photo ack T.Ogle

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/1200x799/north_american_airlines_boeing_757_200_watt_408fb1ed52364d1c 0412d07e3db8d6bf6f3428fe.jpg

treadigraph

2nd May 2023, 05:31

Aviateca leased a Court Line 1-11 1970/71 and adopted their colour scheme for their new build BAC 1-11 500 - then later they leased another Court Line a/c, but did not adopt the OU livery on any other of their fleet.

They certainly did paint at least a pair of DC-6s in a Court Line style scheme, whether any other piston types they had around then succumbed I don't know... they seemed to have "rebranded" quite regularly judging by the number of different schemes one can see in a Google search. I see they had a Connie for a while, not sure if that would have looked fantastic or awful in Court colours!

MENELAUS

2nd May 2023, 06:51

It was Air Europe I think.

Air 2000 in fact. Pre cursor to Flying Colours. One aircraft leased to BA for the winter season, which was generally the quiet season for charter outfits esp when starting up. And was also the reason that the Canada 3000 operation commenced, although that failed to pan out as originally planned.
Different seat configuration to the “ shuttle “ aircraft at 233, and RB211 E4’s as opposed to C’s or D’s.

WHBM

2nd May 2023, 09:29

Aviateca leased a Court Line 1-11 1970/71 and adopted their colour scheme for their new build BAC 1-11 500 - then later they leased another Court Line a/c, but did not adopt the OU livery on any other of their fleet.

Aviateca did paint one or more DC-6 in the Court scheme. They seem to be one of those carriers who did all sorts of schemes on different aircraft at different times. Here's one in Court Yellow

Douglas DC-6 - Aviateca | Aviation Photo #1099758 | Airliners.net (https://www.airliners.net/photo/Aviateca/Douglas-DC-6/1099758)

Another one is a range of Convair 580 operators who followed the style of onetime major user of them, Frontier, with three coloured bands which then kick up over the rear of the fuselage. Here's the original :

Frontier Airlines Convair 580 N73163 | c/n : 366 Delivered :… | Flickr

and here's a range of similar ones, from long after Frontier gave their fleet up. No other aircraft type seems to have gone for this scheme.

Atlantic Gulf :

Atlantic Gulf Convair 580 N5822 | Thank you for 3.4 million … | Flickr

Renown :

Renown Aviation Convair CV580 N203RA | 13th October 1993., F… | Flickr

eckhard

2nd May 2023, 10:23

Ah yes, thanks Menelaus!

ATNotts

2nd May 2023, 13:50

They certainly did paint at least a pair of DC-6s in a Court Line style scheme, whether any other piston types they had around then succumbed I don't know... they seemed to have "rebranded" quite regularly judging by the number of different schemes one can see in a Google search. I see they had a Connie for a while, not sure if that would have looked fantastic or awful in Court colours!

Didn't know about that one, just Googled it. The 1-11 looked pretty dreadful in Court colours, and it does the dear old DC6 no favours whatsoever!

Flap40

2nd May 2023, 15:21

I'm not sure whether it was a manufacturers scheme or which airline had it first but I've seen pictures of G-AVCN with Aurigny and Loganair markings. G-AXKB also in the same scheme with Loganair markings.

WHBM

2nd May 2023, 17:02

The 1-11 looked pretty dreadful in Court colours,
Well I thought the Court scheme was one of the best ever. It certainly was more sophisticated than the Braniff "end of the plain plane" colours, which were just a single overall colour, different for each aircraft, with a white tail.

Nice story about the Court scheme. A meeting was set up at the factory at Hurn to discuss the detailed application of the scheme. On one side were the key personnel from the very 1970 design house who devised it, their offices just off Carnaby Street in London. Apparently they went down to Bournemouth in a multi-coloured custom painted Mini, and entered the offices in trendy-for-the-era Afghan coats and John Lennon-style clothes. On the other side of the table was the old hand paint shop foreman, in brown work coat, long serving, probably in 1970 still ex-WW2 RAF. Moderating all this were the BAC sales team in office suits.

Despite all the mismatch, BAC did a great job in applying the scheme just so. The foreman asked for the British Standard BS.2660 colour numbers, and the design team just rolled them straight off the top of their head.

ATNotts

2nd May 2023, 20:37

I always thought how smart the two-tone blue Autair scheme looked; the Court pink, green and orange appeared to me garish, but beauty is as they say, in the eye of the beholder.

WHBM

2nd May 2023, 23:10

The Court multi-shade colours were more than just the aircraft livery, they were used consistently across documentation, vehicles, flight attendants uniforms (I believe they were issued with one of each colour), etc. This was in a grey world when most photographs, and indeed televisions, were still monochrome, and many airlines just had plain blue cheat lines, and cabin uniforms like they were WAFs..

Stewardess of court line in summer uniform - License, download or print for £6.20 | Photos | Picfair (https://www.picfair.com/pics/09739403-stewardess-of-court-line-in-summer-uniform)

treadigraph

3rd May 2023, 07:47

I always liked the Braniff scheme, sadly I only ever saw "Big Orange" at Gatters and they'd gone by the time I went to the US. The revamped scheme from around 1980 wasn't as nice. CP Air, another belter of a scheme.

There was another South American outfit often in evidence at Miami which had some ex Alitalia DC-8 43s - their scheme owed something to the former owner as I recall! ARCA? Something like that...

Yup Arca Colombia:

https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/10564796

Apparently a 51 rather than a 43... :)

TorC

3rd May 2023, 08:34

Paraguayan Regional got in a spot of bother with Gulf Air a while back.

https://www.flightglobal.com/pictures-gulf-air-investigates-as-paraguayan-carrier-shows-off-near-identical-livery/87550.article

22/04

3rd May 2023, 08:59

LIAT of course also adopted the Court Line scheme, on the H.S. 748

rog747

3rd May 2023, 09:07

I always thought how smart the two-tone blue Autair scheme looked; the Court pink, green and orange appeared to me garish, but beauty is as they say, in the eye of the beholder.

I too liked Autair colours on their 5 BAC 1-11's, and they were looking at buying the developing narrow body 200 seat BAC Two-Eleven as well -
There are artists impressions of the aircraft in Autair livery with a larger Clarksons logo on the T-Tail.

The Autair livery I guess, was thought for the 1970's to be too 'business like' for a Package Tour Holiday airline, but I thought it was rather smart.

Liffy 1M

3rd May 2023, 09:35

Gordomac

3rd May 2023, 10:16

On Court colours; I too loved the innovation. Wasn't it at Gatters, just after Court introduced all the colours when, after landing, ATC Controller remarked to a delicious variant ;" Very nice. Can I have a lick ?".

BKS changed to the Northeast yellow while I was a BKS Cadet at Oxford in 1971. It was a copy of the American outfit (almost identical) and the yellow was quite outrageous for the time. Sister company, Cambrian adopted the same style but painted their aircraft a nice, orangey colour.

I enjoyed all 12 years at Air Europe and glad I never spotted that Canadian outfit in our scheme. Would have been very painful.

Comforting to have flown the Air Europe Italy 76's after AE went down but it just wasn't the same..

And yes, in AE, we did take a couple of BA 757's in BA colours but with Air Europe written on the side. Just a summer contract and we took on six BA Captains and six F/Os who had to swap the ghastly BEA SOP's for our more natural ones. They all loved it .

Don't get me started on our semi wetlease of a Tower Air 747. All white save the Air Europe writing on the front.

When AE went bust, I shot-up to HQ in Crawley seeking to nick one or both fabbo models of a MD-11 and a B747 in the CEO-s office.
In full camouflage and use of wifey's car, in the dead of night, was destroyed to see they were already nick'd !

WHBM

3rd May 2023, 10:17

I suppose if we go back to Channel Airways they adopted this process throughout, as their various different secondhand fleets just carried on with the scheme they came with.

Despite the "Golden Jets" based on Continental (they also pinched aspects of Continental's then-current jet types for these new aircraft), when they bought the five ex-Olympic Comets they just carried on as received, no gold anywhere, just bits of the old livery and logo obviously painted out in not-quite-matching blobs of blue and white, giving a decidedly rough appearance.

zlin77

3rd May 2023, 12:36

Ansett-ANA Australia when they introduced the DC-6B with Ex-Braniff Aircraft retained with minor changes the Braniff livery, I think it was used on other types including the Convair 340 and Electra.

rog747

3rd May 2023, 14:05

In 1970 a new German holiday charter airline Calair, was to take over a total of five of the thirteen Boeing 720-025's offered by Jet Aviation and Boeing from the stock of Eastern Air Lines. Most of the time, however, the machines were left in the maintenance area of Jet Aviation at Basle and were rarely used.

Then there was a most dubious deal in 1973 to sell these to Rhodesia and 3 of the 720's eventually ended up there under a shroud of secrecy on the evening of 14 April 1973
Air Rhodesia just adopted Calair's blue stripe livery and blue tail stripes and this stuck, which saw the Viscounts and later the first 707-330B's were painted up in it.

Air Rhodesia (RH) got its Jet career somewhat obscurely in 1973 with the purchase of the ex-Calair Boeing 720-025s,
acquired through Jet Aviation, circumventing the Rhodesia embargo. The worldwide embargo was imposed because the Prime Minister
Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence from Britain in the 1960s, which did not amuse HM's Govt.
The blue livery was simply a slightly modified Calair livery.
Calair called their 720 Boeing 707-720, which even corresponded to the original type designation.
D-ACIP which became VP-YNL carried the more modest inscription "Boeing 720".

rog747

3rd May 2023, 14:16

One more I thought of -
Both PSA and Wardair's 727's had a remarkably similar simple livery - almost a rendition of Boeing house livery at the time.

WHBM

3rd May 2023, 14:28

Ansett-ANA Australia when they introduced the DC-6B with Ex-Braniff Aircraft retained with minor changes the Braniff livery, I think it was used on other types including the Convair 340 and Electra.
Indeed, the classic Braniff red/black striped livery. Although it came from when Ansett were independent, before merging as Ansett-ANA, and it was their first Convair, it came with the colours that Reg Ansett kept for his fleet. They did indeed then apply it to everything, subsequent DC-6s and Electras, as well as what they inherited from ANA, and even into the 1970s their 727s and DC9s had a scheme which recognisably was based on aspects of it.

Ansett had orders for new Convairs in hand, but this Braniff aircraft built a few months before was surplus and it had been placed from new in store, so it still had the manufacturers new paint on it. Like the subsequent Ansett Convairs they didn't fit it with supplementary fuel tanks for delivery from California, but it came the "long way round", through Gander, London and across Asia.

Groundloop

3rd May 2023, 16:13

Air 2000 in fact. Pre cursor to Flying Colours. One aircraft leased to BA for the winter season, which was generally the quiet season for charter outfits esp when starting up. And was also the reason that the Canada 3000 operation commenced, although that failed to pan out as originally planned.
Different seat configuration to the “ shuttle “ aircraft at 233, and RB211 E4’s as opposed to C’s or D’s.

And yes, in AE, we did take a couple of BA 757's in BA colours but with Air Europe written on the side. Just a summer contract

A bit more on Air Europe. A downtown in traffic led to BA letting some of their 757 order go to Air Europe with the proviso that they got them back when required. At least one of them, G-BKRM, flew in a number of hybrid liverys over a number of years such as the Air Europe scheme with the large "British" titles then later in the BA Landor scheme with Air Europe titles. I remember boarding BKRM one Christmas at Heathrow for a Shuttle flight to Glasgow (it was in the first scheme I described) and walking in the front door and being able to see right to the back of the rear cabin - no bulkheads or partitions along the whole aircraft. Certainly different from BA's usual configuration.

Asturias56

4th May 2023, 13:20

"I always liked the Braniff scheme,"

Flew them a lot in the USA at the time - sure made finding them in a crowded airport easy! Very laid back flight and CC - I liked them..........

Sue Vêtements

26th May 2023, 18:37

Does it count if I took off on a BCAL flight, but landed on a BA flight [1] and nobody had repainted it in the meantime?

[1] - because of the merger

or what about Concorde taxying out as a BA aircraft, then turning 180 degrees to line up and magically becoming a Singapore Airlines aircraft?

. . . and you could argue that this is in two liveries

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Aircraft_of_the_Royal_Air_Force_1939-1945-_De_Havilland_Dh_98_Mosquito._CH14393.jpg

. . . and perhaps this one too

https://i0.wp.com/worldairlinenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/boac-747-profile.jpg?resize=625%2C441&ssl=1

dduxbury310

27th May 2023, 01:42

Down in New Zealand in late 1930s, Union Airways decided to copy the then-current American Airlines scheme on their new Lockheed 10A Electras (polished bare metal overall, with "lightning" flashes applied along fuselage sides in red with black edging, paint possibly applied at factory!) It is possible that at this time AA never heard of these counterfeit scheme aircraft on other side of the World. These Electras were "handed on" to the new National Airways Corporation in 1946/47, along with some similarly decorated Lodestars, and in about 1949/50 NAC's recently acquired ex military DC-3s were also dressed up in similar uniform. However, in about 1952 this was all changed for a much simpler suit of soberly straight-edged cheat lines, and no more "electric" flashes on noses or engine nacelles. Perhaps AA sent them a letter about "unauthorised use of protected intellectual property"?

Uplinker

27th May 2023, 08:29

Flybe used to operate wet charters or leases for Air France out of Toulouse, Paris, (and Lyon, I think). Flybe's BAe 146s, painted in full Air France livery. I was at the Toulouse base. The crew food was absolutely amazing !!

WHBM

27th May 2023, 09:02

Down in New Zealand in late 1930s, Union Airways decided to copy the then-current American Airlines scheme on their new Lockheed 10A Electras (polished bare metal overall, with "lightning" flashes applied along fuselage sides in red with black edging, paint possibly applied at factory!)
It was actually the Lockheed "house" scheme at delivery. Here's the same on a Bata Shoes of Czechoslovakia aircraft, an international trader who ran their own flight department in the 1930s. In fact OK-CTB in the picture was frame number 1091, and the first Union Airways one ZK-AFC was 1092, both delivered April 1937 and thus likely both in the Lockheed paint shop at the same time. After assembly overseas deliveries of Lockheeds at this time were dismantled again and shipped by sea.

Lockheed L–10 Electra | Airplanes on canvas.cz (letadlanaplatne.cz) (https://www.letadlanaplatne.cz/en/film-planes/civilian-aircraft/transport-aircraft/lockheed-l-10-electra/)

It was very much a livery fashion of the time, used by various operators. Incidentally, American actually never bought the Lockheed twins, they went straight from Curtiss Condor biplanes to Douglas DC-2s.