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Rumor now Confirmed: New Southwest Livery Scheme

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Rumor now Confirmed: New Southwest Livery Scheme

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Old Aug 29, 2014, 11:39 pm
  #1  
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Rumor now Confirmed: New Southwest Livery Scheme

Rumor! Rumor! Rumor!!!

A New Southwest Airlines livery scheme. Those 2 737-800 is still the paint shop in GEG instead of Renton, WA.

When they will come out?

Let the speculation begin.
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Old Aug 30, 2014, 1:39 pm
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Rumor: New Southwest Livery Scheme?

Willing to bet these are regular paint jobs being done by Associated Painters on behalf of Boeing. They just opened a second paint hangar over there. With the current delivery rate and only 5 paint bays (as I recall) between BFI and Renton, it would be logical to think they have to farm out some paint jobs. Average production paint is 3 days. I have never seen a "green" airplane delivered to an airline.
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Old Aug 30, 2014, 11:07 pm
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Also, Southwest has a history of occasionally having some specially painted planes (Shamu or whatever), and so a differently-painted plane or two from Southwest is not by itself any evidence of a new overall livery scheme.

(Though you don't even know whether it's differently painted yet. But my point is, even if it were, it might not be new livery, it still could be just special one-off or two-off planes.)
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Old Aug 30, 2014, 11:35 pm
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Sounded like an unsubstantiated rumour from that source of everything aviation, airliners.net, and sure enough, that's where this is from:

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo....main/6167869/
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Old Aug 31, 2014, 9:05 pm
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Originally Posted by FWAAA
Sounded like an unsubstantiated rumour from that source of everything aviation, airliners.net, and sure enough, that's where this is from:

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo....main/6167869/
Started last week in the Frontier new paint scheme thread by a captain from WN. OP just pulled the rumor from A.net and posted here. Latest update has one of the airport in Victorville now, after painting in GEG, so I would imagine something will leak out.
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Old Aug 31, 2014, 9:32 pm
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Originally Posted by FWAAA
Sounded like an unsubstantiated rumour from that source of everything aviation, airliners.net, and sure enough, that's where this is from:

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo....main/6167869/
It's amazing how airliners.net is either accurate way, way in advance of an official press release or completely, totally wrong with little in between.

Taken in context of rebranding the inflight magazine and the fact that they stopped branding the drink cups (I haven't actually paid enough attention to notice that) I think something might be up in regards to an overall rebrand coming out. Still, I don't think WN really needs a rebrand right now.

Also, I have to lol at the (apparently) serious suggestion made in the airliners thread that WN will rename itself as ATA since it's no longer limited to just the southwestern USA.
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Old Sep 1, 2014, 8:21 am
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Originally Posted by alggag
Taken in context of rebranding the inflight magazine and the fact that they stopped branding the drink cups (I haven't actually paid enough attention to notice that) I think something might be up in regards to an overall rebrand coming out. Still, I don't think WN really needs a rebrand right now.
WN's poor schedule performance over the next year, dropping of some smaller markets, complications with rollout of international service requires SOME type of hype to calm the koolaid drinkers, change the negative media narrative. The upcoming network changes from the expiration of the Wright amendment provides the perfect opportunity to make a big splash, new marketing campaign could explain recent behaviors.

The only way I could see SWA adopting the Airtran brand was if Kelly decided to adopt their policies - reserved seats, first class cabin - which does not seem very likely.
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Old Sep 1, 2014, 10:35 am
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Rumor it that SWA will have a new livery of an Eskimo painted on their tale eventually.
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Old Sep 1, 2014, 11:00 am
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Originally Posted by SDCA
Rumor it that SWA will have a new livery of an Eskimo painted on their tale eventually.
Good one!^
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Old Sep 1, 2014, 11:21 am
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Originally Posted by alggag
Taken in context of rebranding the inflight magazine and the fact that they stopped branding the drink cups (I haven't actually paid enough attention to notice that) I think something might be up in regards to an overall rebrand coming out. Still, I don't think WN really needs a rebrand right now.
I though it was just a result of flushing all of the Airtan stuff out of the system, in anticipation of their final closure.

I agree that someday they will rename the airline to position themselves as a truly national/international airline. But that will be the next management team. If Herb was still in charge they probably would have done it already.

New Name Suggestions:
  • Pan Am
  • TWA
  • Air America
  • Branniff
  • Freedom Airlines
  • JetAmerica
  • Legend Airlines
  • National Airlines
  • Nationwide Airlines
  • Red Baron Airlines
  • Sky Trek
  • Valujet
  • Airtran
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Old Sep 1, 2014, 4:46 pm
  #11  
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I'd like to see the SW planes painted all white

Or paint the head with faces on them. Like those cartoon fighter jets
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Old Sep 1, 2014, 4:49 pm
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Originally Posted by diver858
WN's poor schedule performance over the next year, dropping of some smaller markets, complications with rollout of international service requires SOME type of hype to calm the koolaid drinkers, change the negative media narrative. The upcoming network changes from the expiration of the Wright amendment provides the perfect opportunity to make a big splash, new marketing campaign could explain recent behaviors.

The only way I could see SWA adopting the Airtran brand was if Kelly decided to adopt their policies - reserved seats, first class cabin - which does not seem very likely.
Who said anything about WN adopting the FL brand?

Originally Posted by rsteinmetz70112
I though it was just a result of flushing all of the Airtan stuff out of the system, in anticipation of their final closure.

I agree that someday they will rename the airline to position themselves as a truly national/international airline. But that will be the next management team. If Herb was still in charge they probably would have done it already.
Because Northwest had so many struggles over the decades being a truly national/international airline with their directional name?
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Old Sep 1, 2014, 5:05 pm
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Originally Posted by rsteinmetz70112
New Name Suggestions:
  • Freedom Airlines
You are now Free to move about the country.

(Do they still use that slogan?)


And speaking of slogans, I think Frontier (in its move toward ULCC hell) is dropping "A Whole Different Animal", and the planes painted to match that slogan. Maybe Southwest could do something of that sort now that it's available?
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Old Sep 1, 2014, 5:15 pm
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Originally Posted by flyventure
Who said anything about WN adopting the FL brand?



Because Northwest had so many struggles over the decades being a truly national/international airline with their directional name?
Or Delta, for that matter.

I would like to reiterate that the suggestion in the airliners thread was that Southwest adopt the ATA name (the airline that was partnered with WN for a few years and which was later acquired in 2008 pretty much exclusively for their LGA slot holdings) NOT the AirTran name.
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Old Sep 1, 2014, 5:28 pm
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Originally Posted by diver858
WN's poor schedule performance over the next year, dropping of some smaller markets, complications with rollout of international service requires SOME type of hype to calm the koolaid drinkers, change the negative media narrative. The upcoming network changes from the expiration of the Wright amendment provides the perfect opportunity to make a big splash, new marketing campaign could explain recent behaviors.
There's still enough value and goodwill (IMO) that actually addressing and fixing those problems will be sufficient to continue on with the current brand.

Rebranding by itself without actually acknowledging the problems and outlining what they're going to do fix them is just going to piss people off more.
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