A lot of airlines nowadays have planes with special liveries. Sometimes they’re to recognize a partnership, sometimes they just have a general theme, and sometimes they’re just for fun.
All U.S. carriers have some sort of special livery aircraft, though I feel like I see the most special livery planes from Alaska and JetBlue. Alaska has quite a few planes with liveries for sports teams and schools of cities they serve. I don’t like school and don’t like sports, so I can’t say that resonates all that much with me. 😉
However, recently JetBlue has introduced a new livery after my own heart. The special livery is called” Blueprint, and it’s entirely aviation themed. Here’s how JetBlue describes it on their blog:
JetBlue’s design team created a paint scheme that showcased the so-called “bones” of the 100-seat aircraft. Drawing upon the styles of various aviation, nautical and space exploration vehicle cut-away diagrams, the JetBlue design team created a mechanical x-ray of sorts infused with some JetBlue fun.
The see-through paint job draws on both the technical and fanciful aspects of air travel. Mechanical features like the nose gear, jet engine and yoke were among the more obvious design elements to include. But for the onboard features, JetBlue designers drew upon their own travel experiences, crewmember tales, and the airline’s loyal customers for inspiration, even creating fictional characters to compile a list of the items they might be traveling with. Plane spotters are encouraged to give the overhead bins, under-seat storage areas, and the luggage holds a closer look to see if they can spot the nearly 50 items these “Blueprint” customers are traveling with.
How sexy is that?!
As mentioned above, perhaps what makes this most interesting is that they’re not just using obvious design elements, but also adding some other things for fun. For example:
- There’s a piñata in the cargo hold, along with a bat and party hat
- JetBlue claims they had a customer who loved French press coffee so much that he’d bring his own French press onboard, so you can se that in the overhead bin
- A crewmember’s family once flew with a cactus that they picked up during a trip
Well done, JetBlue! Very well done!
Anyone love this livery as much as I do?
(Tip of the hat to Drew)
I saw this plane a couple of weeks back at LGA. Very cool.
JetBlue customer for life, excellent new design, keep the good work up.
If I remember correctly, didn't Kulula do something like this with their Flying101 campaign?
I'm surprised it took you this long to write about this Lucky., you're usually very quick with avgeek news. I do love the new livery. We had a couple of spring like weather days in Boston a couple weeks ago when this plane was revealed so I managed to go spotting at Logan and of course I wasn't the only person there eager to see it. It's super cool in person.
A cross between R2D2 and KLM -- nice!
I think WN deserves a mention for their special liveries as well. Long live the Whale Plane.
I'm so glad that there is a more intuitive and interesting livery, there has definitely been a trend in which airlines move to a more clean and sleek design, it's cool to see JetBlue go the other direction!