Tuesday 4 October 2011

British Airways Failure

British Airways as a brand seems to have had one major drama after another as it has stepped into the millenium. In 1997, BA suffered severly by introducing 'ethnic liveries' displaying worldly images on aircraft tailfins. Promoting it's global links and routes seemed a great idea at the time, however they literally lowered the Union Jack and came across as unpatriotic - especially when announcing cost-saving redundancies shortly afterwards.

Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher showed her displeasure at the designs by covering one of the new tailfins on a model 747 with a handkerchief at a launch event. This was a major blow for BA popularity which Virgin Atlantic took advantage of. On the back of this BA controversy, Branson applied the flag to the front end and later the wings of its aircraft, leading up to their relaunch in 1999.

BA brought back the Union Jack tailfin (BBC News Article) along with a rebrand including a modern swoosh logo, tweaked typeface and a new color palette including silver, rebranded by FutureBrand. who were made responsible for setting the new standards of excellence. Having returned the airline to it's 'Britishness' in 2001, negative PR haunted BA including further cabin crew strikes along with the recent merger with Iberia in 2010. One failure after another, until now ...


(find out in the next blog)

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