The aircraft, which has been painted to mark British Airways’ centenary, enters service this afternoon with its maiden commercial flight in its new colours to Manchester. As British Airways prepared for the privatisation that would take place in 1987, a new livery and fresh corporate identity was created. The scheme, very dignified, sophisticated, quite royal, a little duller than what was around, but very British. - John RingoThe world tails were a disaster, just what did they represent?
CityFlyer’s first two Avro RJ-100s were delivered in this version, and repainted a couple of months later © Doug Green – Global Aviation ResourceFast forward to 1997 and after 13 years, and with BA claiming that the scheme “carried an air of arrogance and detachment”, Landor was replaced by the controversial Project Utopia or World Image scheme, with the crest and motto dropped from the livery to make the airline appear more ‘global and caring’.Another part of the redesign was the newly stylised version of the British Airways ‘Speedbird’ logo, the ‘Speedmarque’, previously seen on both Negus and Landor, but the most significant change was the introduction of tail-fin art.
The speedbird was replaced with a 'Brilliant Red' speedwing running along lower fuselage.
There is, however, one significant difference from the original livery, with the A319 sporting a grey upper wing, rather than the traditional red. The painstaking process of arranging them for the photo took over two (careful) hours – Image © British AirwaysThis special series of designs has been introduced specifically to mark British Airways’ centenary and all new aircraft entering the BA fleet, including the forthcoming Airbus A350, will continue to receive the current day ‘Chatham Dockyard’ paint scheme, more of which later.The first of the heritage aircraft revealed was the BOAC-liveried Boeing 747 (G-BYGC). It featured a streamlined evolution of the BOAC and BEA insignia by way of a quartered Union Flag with a red tip on the tailfin and the Speedbird symbol on the nose.The iconic British Airways ‘Landor’ livery was designed by Landor Associates and used between 1984 and 1997.
The former was named after the Negus & Negus creative agency run by graphic designer Dick Negus and his wife Pam, while the latter was designed by the New York firm Landor Associates.The Negus scheme featured white upper surfaces with dark blue underside and a blue ‘Speedbird’ logo positioned near the cockpit, while the tail design represented a quarter Union Jack flag with red top to the tail. Make a visit to Despite the name I am a Boeing man through and through!I had heard in the news many moons ago, that the world tails were disliked by the ATC's because they couldn't tell which airline each aircraft was from. ^SteThere had been some high speculation on social media about seeing British Airways paint some of its planes in vintage liveries.The airline replied that “you’ll not hear any arguments against this from us,” noting that the “centenary is next year, so you never know.”“The 747 has been deliberately chosen for the BOAC livery as it is a later variant of the same aircraft type that adorned the design when it was initially in operation,” said the airline in a statement.According to British Airways, the BOAC livery will remain on the 747 until it retires in 2023.
The logo, identity and livery was created by Negus & Negus and presented in 1973. LONDON — Virgin Atlantic has been quietly bringing together a plan of action that will see the airline create a business plan... So it was that Chatham Dockyard became the standard British Airways livery after the phased withdrawal of all the remaining Project Utopia / World Image aircraft.Almost 20 years later, it remains the design worn by British Airways aircraft today.Chatham Dockyard nicely illustrated on this shot of an Airbus A380 landing at the end of its delivery flight © Paul Dunn – www.globalaviationresource.comTo mark the appearance of all four heritage schemes, we thought it would be appropriate to celebrate a good few years of British Airways history, and that is reflected in the gallery below, with many of the archive images previously unpublished.All that remains is to wish British Airways a successful centenary and we look forward to seeing the four retro schemes in service around the UK and beyond. Are there still any British Airways aircraft in the old colors?They looked awesome!Do you mean in the old Landor colours?, or the World Tail colours??
British Airways Website Colors with Hex & RGB Codes Name: Red (Pigment) Hex: #eb2226 RGB: (235, 34, 38) CMYK: 0, 0.855, 0.838, 0.078 Save on worldwide flights and holidays when you book directly with British Airways. The original design included a smaller no. Red elements on the wings were added to give an impression of streamlining, speed and elegance.