Originally Posted by
hikouki
Interesting that they had names for ALL their aircraft... did they ever have short-term leased aircraft?
LH also bestows names to their aircraft but not to the ones on short-term lease.
I remember whenever TG receives new aircraft, these planes will be "blessed" by a monk during a ceremony and they would always publish photos of the ceremony on Sawasdee magazine (inflight mag).
Yes—most recent short-term leased aircraft I can think of are probably the Jet Airways 77Ws and they all had names.
These names are also, at least formally, royally bestowed, which is why in Thai when people refer to the names of the aircrafts they would say
chue (name)
praratchathan (royally given) and presumably why the aircraft name would also referred to by the honorific
khun i.e. HS-TTA would be referred to as
Khun Alongkorn. As mentioned upthread, there is generally a theme to the names for each aircraft type. The A320s are province names, many of the 777s have literary-inspired names, and most fitting for the Queen of the Skies—the former 747 fleet were named after historical queens and royal consorts i.e. the Star Alliance livery 744 HS-TGW was
Khun Visuthakasatriya.