JMurray

Oh dear, I've been in hysterics for the past two minutes because of this...serves them right anyway

In 'Air Babylon', whether true or not, one particular scenario is mentioned where two passengers who couldn't resist headed to the toilet to do the dirty. Unfortunatley they managed to alert the crew via the call button in the process.

That book is certainly worth a read to everyone on here. BBB you should give it a go and report on what's actually true!

HilFly

BBB: I think you should write a work of fiction () in which you reveal all that goes on on board (airline name of choice) Airways. Just make sure you use a nom de plume. But make it one that we will recognize as you, like Billy Bob Baggins or something.

ColdWalker

The historic docks in Portsmouth are one of my passions, so i asked once and got the answer. Concorde's last livery design was called 'Chathm Dockyard' so I was told. I imagine CHD was picked as a name due to the number of Ships of the Line, the largest of navy vessels, and flagships that were built there including HMS Victory. A worthy subject to link to the nations flag carrying aircraft.

Stez

Thanks ^

Jimmie76

Absolute Class!

I'd have been tempted by the ice bucket 'accident' myself.

sunrisegirl

Unaccompanied minor tags, wheelchair tags, fragile tags, heavy bag stickers.
And at LGW we have circular yellow tags which we attach to bags checked in the night before.

Littlegirl

Well, at one point BA decided with the help of an ad agency that it would be a great idea to paint the aircraft tails in designs from across the world.
We commissions artists from lots of other countries to design a number of different tail designs; we had a german one with a red, yellow and black design, a Dutch delf one, a Carabean one, a few others and one to represent the UK. It was supposed to look like a flag flying in the wind (Chatham dock).

Inside each aircraft was a description explaining what lay behind the design.

These were very unpopular and the only design that was liked was the Chatham Dock design and eventually all the tails were repainted with this design. The information that youvsee in a lot of our aircraft is just explaining the origin of the tail design.

Jimmie76

A very informative post, thanks.

Globaliser

It was a bit more complex than that, both at the beginning and the end.

The original idea was not just for the aircraft fins. The artwork was used across a great deal of the corporate branding. For example, each baggage tag would have (in addition to the British Airways name and speedmarque) a small panel showing one of the artworks. Likewise, a lot of signs had a decorative panel.

The art came from all over the world, and much of it was chosen to be distinctively recognisable in origin. The idea was to show that although BA has British origins and a British base, it also welcomes the rest of the world, which should not see BA as wholly foreign or insular. That idea isn't a bad one, either commercially or socially.

However, the aircraft fins were most prominent and most controversial. They tended to give the fleet a motley appearance, when branding relies so much on uniformity. Of course, some people just didn't like the fact that the designs were foreign.

In addition, they also caused some operating problems - for example, air traffic control had difficulties when telling other airlines' crews to follow the Speedbird, because often they wouldn't recognise the aircraft as a BA. When one BA aircraft was leased to Qantas, it flew to LAX from time to time, where there was an incident because it was misidentified as a BA instead of a Qantas despite the Qantas markings on the fuselage - and the tail was hurriedly painted over in white almost immediately to prevent that recurring.

So there were a number of reasons for getting rid of the fins. Unfortunately, in my personal view, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. The idea of using real art (not just corporate logo-making) in a high-profile and public way was, I think, a good one. There should have been no need to get rid of the artwork from other locations, even if the fins were standardised to one (British) design - Chatham Dockyard, which had appeared on the Concorde fins. But they went because they were irredeemably tarnished with the same brush, and irretrievably associated with the unpopular CEO who introduced the project.

Littlegirl

Not much different to what I said then! I thought our poster was asking why we had Chatham dock in a frame, not for a history. I could have obviously gone into a huge amount of detail but thought maybe that would have been too much information for a simple question about a picture frame!

The designs were very unpopular and although the intention was to make us look like a global airline it never did, all the branding was bad and just made us look like we didn't have an identity anymore and I am very surprised that you personally think any of it was a good idea.

Jimmie76

Probably why I don't like the current Exec Club Card designs.

Littlegirl

Yes, I don't like the way they are all different now.

I would have kept the design the same for all and just altered the colours. Sometimes people like to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of it!

NonSmokingWindow

I actually liked the concept and, for the most part the implementation of the "World Images." If anyone's interested here's a few of the images:

http://tinyurl.com/CASBAWI

One thing I quite liked about the implementation was that at many airports where BA had dedicated check-in locations, the backdrop had magnetised panels where we could change the World Image being displayed.

Globaliser

They were not universally unpopular. They polarised opinion greatly, but there was a lot of BA's client base that were receptive to the idea. Although I know it's dangerous to rely on anecdote, my personal experience of non-British reactions is from Hong Kong and South Africa. In both places, Utopia was seen as an attempt by the company to say "We are not simply a British airline for British people, even though that is how we have traditionally appeared to you; we recognise who you are and we are here for you too". That's exactly what Utopia was intended to do, and if you talk to non-British passengers who remember that period, it did work for them in exactly that way. When individual people are making purchasing decisions, such warm fuzzies matter - just as they do on board when individual crew members interact with individual passengers.

In that context, I'm surprised that you seem to think that there was not an ounce of good in the idea whatsoever. Much opinion inside the company is tainted by the idea's association with the CEO who introduced it, whose unpopularity inside the company is less in doubt. My view is that it went too far; the fins were not a good idea, both in livery/branding terms and for operational reasons. The rest of it did not undermine overall branding because the fundamental common branding themes were there, as they still are - Mylius, the colour palette and the speedmarque; the accents didn't detract from that - plus, as well, there was real merit in using real art as part of high-profile corporate branding.

I know that this has been triggered by someone asking about the Chatham dockyard picture, but as your original reply demonstrated, other than at the most superficial level the answer that question is inextricably linked to a controversial period in the company's history.

Disco Volante

I agree. The idea was a good one. It portrayed BA as a confident international airline. BOAC liveries didn't use the national flag, and I think it is a mistake for a company trading internationally as BA does to identify itself so closely with the UK. It smaks of the bad old days of nationalisation.

BA's current logo (and the Chatham House design) look pretty dated.