Lufthansa still name their aircrafts after German cities.

Spanair does give names to their aircrafts and the most I've seen and flew with had a name beginnig with "sun----" eg: sunburst, sunbreeze, ...

Skipness --- BeaAirtours
 

BEA (British) Airtours callsign was "BEETOURS" as owner BEA was "BEELINE"

And it was not owned by the tour operator Airtours of MAN! How do I know, I was one of the original 1970 Beetours members!!!

merlinxx,

Pay attention at the back! This thread is about aircraft names, not callsigns. :)

CSA gives A/C town names all complete with heraldry sticker at the front door and "baptism" ceremony with the mayor involved. A single exception was the "Skyrider" named in the honour of Czech-Slovak Battle of Britain hero servicemen in the presence of the late Frantisek Fajtl, Grand-Croix Légion d'Honneur, DFC, the first ever non-British citizen to command a RAF squadron (122 - City of Bombay).

Strangely enough, the largest aircraft to bear a Czech town name is a KLM 777 PH-BQL "Litomyšl Castle" and the latest batch of CSA A320 bear the names of moutain ranges that confine the Czech Republic plateau.
FD
(the un-real)

KLM, Iberia, and TAP. All named after famous people, though KLM choose them from all over the work, Iberia and TAP only from Spain and Portugal respectively.

Two of Easyjets 737-700s have names not sure on the A320s G-EZKE is named 'Daniel Swaddle' in memory of a young lad from Newcastle Airport training acadamy lost his life. The other is G-EZJZ named 'Ray Webster' after one of EZYs CEOs I believe.

BA stopped naming their a/c when the new livery came out.

British Midland used to name their a/c after famous diamonds back in the day's of the Diamond Service.

:}

Both SAS and Braathens (today under the umbrella of SAS Norway) have named their aircraft.

SAS named their aircraft with a first name and the last name Viking - here is Steinar Viking (LN-RRA) and where the name is placed.

http://www.plane-spotter.com/Jpegs/415/SAS/2P_wave.jpg

Up until the last decade or so only male first names were used, but now you will also find female name in the fleet, like the latest 737 addition LN-KKB Cecilia Viking.

Braathens named originally their aircraft after viking kings that had lived around 1000 year ago, like Harald Hårfagre (you probably know him as Harold Fairhair). You will find these viking king names on 737-505s and 737-405s. With the new -705s the names of viking queens were used.

Kurt

Names for aircraft, often with a fleet "theme", do seem to come and go with operators over time. Since the advent of jetways, with few pax now seeing the nose of the aircraft, they do seem to have a limited function.

Another aspect is they do not seem to last, almost all which get applied end up being changed or removed long before the aircraft is finally sold. BA had several goes with different name patterns on the same aircraft in its fleet, others have done the same. Even Pan Am, which used its "Clipper" name sequence through to the end, used to cycle them round rather than leave them be.