world tails--hated that much?
Mar 17, 2019, 4:08 am
#47
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and LH, QR, and UA which don't... which suggests to me that hypotheses that including the flag on one's tail either 1)2) gets you a bigger share of the domestic market or 2) repels the international market will have a hard time being proven! Chances are that flag/no flag may not be that critical on that particular front and that this is about something else a bit more complex and indirect I guess...
Mar 17, 2019, 4:13 am
#48
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I did like some of the world tail designs. Though I think having on the tail was maybe the wrong approach, maybe it was just a bit too ahead of its time, but it might have been a better fit if they had standardised the tail but incorporated the world design into the body of the aircraft in some way.
Mar 17, 2019, 4:20 am
#50
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I did like some of them, but can understand that they might have been confusing in certain circumstances. I wish they had kept one or two, but I think the Thatcher disapproval, bearing in mind she made BA, is what did for them.
Mar 17, 2019, 4:24 am
#51
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PS: some of them are rather spotty too in honour of teenage skin worries!
PPS: having had a look refreshed my memory on some I had completely forgotten, and again, I really quite like both the concept and the delivery in many cases
PPPS: Wikipedia refers to the Chatham house as the concorde one whilst showing an image of a later painted 744. tss tss...
Mar 17, 2019, 4:58 am
#52
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That is how I saw it too. It speaks very much of its era, both for BA and more widely for the UK, a period when BA was confident enough of who it was and its origins without feeling the need it to ram it down your throat, a BA that was forward and outward-looking, dared to be different and innovate, as was Britain as a whole ("Cool Britannia", YBAs, Foster and Rogers rather than Prince Charles for architecture, etc ...). While there was as much to throw away as there was to keep (and you could say the same with the BA tails), it was full of dynamism, energy and optimism. What a contrast to the current era, both for BA and for Britain.
Mar 17, 2019, 5:22 am
#53
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That is how I saw it too. It speaks very much of its era, both for BA and more widely for the UK, a period when BA was confident enough of who it was and its origins without feeling the need it to ram it down your throat, a BA that was forward and outward-looking, dared to be different and innovate, as was Britain as a whole ("Cool Britannia", YBAs, Foster and Rogers rather than Prince Charles for architecture, etc ...). While there was as much to throw away as there was to keep (and you could say the same with the BA tails), it was full of dynamism, energy and optimism. What a contrast to the current era, both for BA and for Britain.
Mar 17, 2019, 5:40 am
#54
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This was also the time BA forgot who they were and slowly lost focus and money. Remember investing in France (TAT) and Germany (Deutsche BA) never turned a profit once. It was all about neglecting the core business while the globalsists built an Empire, which was ironic given the above.
To be fair, BA was in the same boat as a number of major European airlines at the time. The EU internal market in aviation had just been liberated and nobody quite knew what to expect and many airlines thought that investing in airlines in other Member States was the way forward. LH and SAS took participation in BMI, KLM acquired Air UK, Air France acquired Cityjet, not to mention the disastrous acquisition policy followed by Swissair a little later.
I do not think that the European acquisitions were a sign of BA "losing its way" and "neglecting the core business" but rather one of dipping your toe in the water in the presence of an uncertain future.
Mar 17, 2019, 5:48 am
#55
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This was also the time BA forgot who they were and slowly lost focus and money. Remember investing in France (TAT) and Germany (Deutsche BA) never turned a profit once. It was all about neglecting the core business while the globalsists built an Empire, which was ironic given the above. You have to market to the mass market in a truly competitive environment and Utopia was so utterly middle class bonkers and niche, that the art from Japan, was unrecognisable as Japanese. So it fails to achieve recognising the nation at all. Anyone remember the American tail? The one reflecting BA’s most important market? Nope, me neither.
Mar 17, 2019, 6:04 am
#56
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I also don't accept the argument that BA neglected the core business during this period. It was investing heavily in the mainline business (with new Airbus and Boeing orders, new short and long haul products, spent £14M to refurbish Concorde cabins, online booking systems, lounges etc), and acquired CityFlyer Express (now BA Cityflyer)
Sources:
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_...ualBA/ra97.pdf
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_...ualBA/ra00.pdf
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_...ualBA/ra01.pdf
Mar 17, 2019, 6:05 am
#57
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Acquisition in other European Member States goes back to a little earlier, viz early 90s, which corresponds to the liberalisation of the EU internal market in aviation (the so-called "third package", that fully liberalised EU air transport was adopted in 1992) although it did continue more or less throughout the decade.
To be fair, BA was in the same boat as a number of major European airlines at the time. The EU internal market in aviation had just been liberated and nobody quite knew what to expect and many airlines thought that investing in airlines in other Member States was the way forward. LH and SAS took participation in BMI, KLM acquired Air UK, Air France acquired Cityjet, not to mention the disastrous acquisition policy followed by Swissair a little later.
I do not think that the European acquisitions were a sign of BA "losing its way" and "neglecting the core business" but rather one of dipping your toe in the water in the presence of an uncertain future.
To be fair, BA was in the same boat as a number of major European airlines at the time. The EU internal market in aviation had just been liberated and nobody quite knew what to expect and many airlines thought that investing in airlines in other Member States was the way forward. LH and SAS took participation in BMI, KLM acquired Air UK, Air France acquired Cityjet, not to mention the disastrous acquisition policy followed by Swissair a little later.
I do not think that the European acquisitions were a sign of BA "losing its way" and "neglecting the core business" but rather one of dipping your toe in the water in the presence of an uncertain future.
By contrast, things like the purchase of TAT dates back to 1992 in the midst of the Landor livery period, and does not make the Landor livery any less nice. In fact, I fully agree with NickB that it was an ambitious yet measured way of trying to explore the new opportunities afforded by the single market and regulatory changes and BA was actually absolutely right to try to see if it could make it work. Airlines like AF were a lot more timid about it and I don't think that was a positive sign at all. BA tried, it perhaps did not work s well as they would have ideally hoped, and they then rethought their strategy, just as they did with the possibility of creating a low cost arm.
Last edited by orbitmic; Mar 17, 2019 at 11:39 am
Mar 17, 2019, 10:48 am
#59
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So IMO the direction was absolutely right. And being first comes with risk; but, everyone eventually followed flat beds in J. Premium economy stuck, even though it’s still not ubiquitous. I still like the world images tailfins, and think that the Chatham Dockyard one is one of the weaker ones; it hasn’t aged that well and doesn’t have the gravitas of the Landor livery, or the confidence shown by having the whole range. The biggest failure of the period, looking back, was the failure to make a go of Go! But that’s the problem with being first sometimes... BA had identified (correctly) the threat from the low cost carriers, and set up Go! But then failed to run it effectively. 10 years (rounding cavalierly...) later Qantas did the same with Jetstar, and seem to have successfully run it alongside, but separate from, it’s mainline operation.
Mar 18, 2019, 8:42 am
#60
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But I can't help thinking that it was just too much too quickly after Landor.
Would it have worked out better if it had started with fewer designs?
Say had it been started with;
Chatham Dockyard, Rose, Tartan, (a Welsh and Irish one) first? (this was the time of devolution, at the time there was still a reasonable domestic network and Logan was T/A BA too.)
Then additional ones could have been added for DBA in Germany and Comair.
And finally other world tails added to mark events in other countries as required
