The funny thing is that the tulip was first designed for United in 1974 by Saul Bass.



Interestingly, one of Bass's other airline commissions was this logo, designed in 1968:



For those of you who may be a little too young, this was known as the "jetstream" logo and belonged to Continental.

Some have even suggested combining the two Saul Bass logos for UaCo to make this, but, alas, to no avail: