#lufthansa declined

(By the way, it is indeed Alaska Airlines. I have always found that somewhat unintuitive. It's just not how you're used to hearing things phrased, right? It's Possessive Noun Airlines, Air Noun. America Airlines would sound weird. Alaska Airlines sounds weird. I am never surprised when people mistakenly say Alaskan Airlines, but it's Alaska Airlines. Just so we're all on the same page.)

Alaska's a bit of a hard place to navigate. Big empty place, lots of ice, lots of mountains, islands, trees...not very much asphalt. That's even true now, but it used to be way truer, and even back then people did still live there. And there's a lot of things those people might maybe like to have, like medical care, or food, or just the hypothetical possibility of getting somewhere without having to get the snowshoes out. In that sense, Alaska is a really perfect place for aviation to flourish.

More or less as early as physically possible, when there were planes available that weren't requisitioned for the first World War or owned by the ultra-rich, people were flying in Alaska. In a lot of ways the basic landscape hasn't changed that much. With its surplus of difficult environments and paucity of actual tarmac Alaska's harsh wilderness is an environment only suited for "bush" flying, using smaller, more rugged airplanes specialized for the environment. Some of the most popular models of bush plane are very old, not that dissimilar to what you'd see in the 50s and 60s - apparently, they just don't make them the same anymore, and as long as you don't get your de Havilland Beaver crunched horribly into the side of a mountain there's just nothing that can replace it. Alaska is full of planes on floats, planes on skis, and taildraggers on tundra tires, most of them high-wing and piston-engined. Bush pilots are a unique sort, often doing work that's neither glamorous nor lucrative (nor safe, with Alaska having two to five times the accident rate of the lower 48) but undeniably necessary.

That's not as true of Alaska Airlines. They have a modern fleet, a good safety record except for that one time, and as a category III carrier they make over a billion dollars in revenue each fiscal year, meaning their finances aren't too strained (except for that one time). Unlike the local carriers that connect remote parts of Alaska to resources and to major cities, Alaska Airlines connects Alaska to the rest of the nearby world. (Though it also does short, multi-stop milk run flights.) It's a necessary part of the ecosystem, helping to keep Alaska's beautiful but hostile terrain from getting in the way of daily life. Before they became Alaska Airlines, though, they were far more similar to what you might expect of...Alaska airlines.

Image: Roy S. Dickson

In 1932, a man with the fantastic name 'Linious McGee' started his very own airline. You could just do that back then. In 1934 it was merged into Star Air Service, another tiny airline. Star Air Service had also been founded in 1932, born from the flight-school-starting dreams of a wealthy miner with the similarly wonderful name 'Wesley Earl Dunkle'. Apparently Star had its first ever aircraft, a Fleet B-5 biplane, brought to Alaska by steamship, which I just find fairly interesting. I guess this was before you could even ferry an airplane directly to Alaska by air. They ate up a few other small airlines (and their routes), and in 1943 they won a small scuffle against another pretender to formerly rebrand themselves as Alaska Airlines. So it's been 80 years of that now!

They've gone from flying Curtiss Robins, Ford Trimotors, and Lockheed Vegas to flying basically only 737s, save a few vestigial A320 family aircraft acquired when merging with Virgin America which they plan to phase out by the end of 2024. Their livery is also on E175 regional jets operated by Horizon Air and SkyWest. The airplanes flying for them number around 300. That's incredibly large even by the standards of major airlines (not even counting the SkyWest planes that have the livery).

The Alaska Airlines livery is not breaking any molds and I need to say that upfront. This is a very straightforward pattern I've taken to calling the Lufthansa Declined, or the Lufthansa Line SAS Variation. (Because the push and pull of trend cycles in brand identity is basically comparable to chess, right? Maybe? No? Not really?) I've recently codified the concept of the Lufthansa Line, the straight line continuing where the tailfin left off to carve through the fuselage. This is a very common and very disappointing fuselage trope. The Declined, or SAS Variation, is named for an airline I specifically contrasted with Lufthansa from my very first post on this blog, SAS.

The SAS Variation simply curves this line outwards towards the front of the plane, stopping the cutoff from being quite so blunt and hopefully undoing the unbalancing effect somewhat. This can solve some of the nastier effects of Lufthansa Lines, particularly on shorter planes, but can also look very wonky if implemented without enough care. It's not always a big improvement, but it's definitely not the exact same thing, either, and it's this shape which Alaska Airlines attempts. Being introduced in 2016, this livery actually pre-dates SAS, but Delta and Lufthansa weren't starting their own namesake patterns either. The names aren't attributed based on innovation, but on formative status in my own specific understanding of airline liveries. SAS as contrasted to Lufthansa is the holotype for my creation of the taxon, and thus earlier liveries are retroactively SASlikes. Birds are dinosaurs and whales are ungulates. Taxonomy is imperfect and has to accommodate new discoveries within a sometimes unintuitive framework. That's just how it is.

I think they do better than many. The fact that they use so many colors, layered over each other, is crucial to the effect. It accomplishes similar things as a gradient might, transitioning from dark to light with minimal pain in the process.

Image taken from Alaska Airlines's very useful branding style guide.

The shades of blue and green used resemble the Aurora Borealis. I can't find anything confirming that this is intentional but I can't imagine it isn't. I think they're very nicely chosen. Different lightings can make the blue (Alaska's material calls it midnight blue, but it's technically Prussian blue) look anywhere from true vivid blue to more of a deep ocean color, which is one of my favorite shades. In particular, the very washed out yellowish green is an absolutely gorgeous choice for a highlight color. I like that the colors aren't given equal purchase, though, and that the green is used sparingly for highlight, and to create that lovely subtle 'halo' around the face on the tail. Sometimes less is more, and this is one of those cases. In fact, their own website states:

Midnight is our primary brand color, and should be used sparingly to avoid overuse—giving more prominence to the Alaska Airlines brand.

(They also note that they took specific efforts in the design process to make sure these colors had significant contrast between them to meet accessibility standards, which I really appreciate and want to see more of.)

For example, if the 'intermediate' blue colors took up more of the plane, or were separate from the green, I would probably not feel any real way about them. I definitely wouldn't think they were nice if they just did a standard Lufthansa Line block with each color individually expressed. But using them as a trim to a nice clear deep blue, overlapping each other in a way that's very carefully mapped out but seems at a glance essentially random, halfway to mixing, like the dark tail is melting slowly into the fuselage...that's nice. That adds something.

The partially-overlapping, brushlike curves are further expressed as swashes on the winglets and engines. What's interesting to me is that if you look closer you can see that the little curves are on both the inboard and outboard sides of each engine and winglet, so you get that consistent curve, hypothetically, no matter what angle you see it from. I do think I appreciate that. The curves are just never going to all line up, because airplanes are inconveniently three-dimensional and there are as many angles to view them from as there are Planck lengths at a distance where you can tell what it is you're seeing. This is a weakness in all liveries more detailed than a Braniff jellybean and adding the curves to even the side of the engine that you're usually not going to see is definitely an appreciated attempt to mitigate this. Does it work? Maybe not totally, but I see the effort.

While there's never a perfect syzygy into one continuous line, the curves seem like they're part of the same nebulous body from most angles. I appreciate this approach. I think making things look pretty good from most angles is worth more than making things look really good from one angle and awkward from all others. As they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I absolutely love the use on just the inside middle of the scimitar winglet, which I already think is a gorgeous feature that just elevates the MAX and retrofitted 737NGs compared to the vanilla model. It's distinctive and stylish, and the limiting of the color to just the lower half of the upper blade has a real restrained elegance to it - these slashes of color are all the more effective for the way they interact with the space around them.

Just look at these winglets. They're such a tiny feature. It's absolutely wild that I can be this in love with winglets, but there's just something about split scimitar wingtips that make me go completely wild. The amount of space and the interesting shape leaves so much more room for creativity than just about any other wingtip device. Alaska Airlines does have planes with other wingtip styles, and it uses those effectively too - covering the lower half of canted/blended winglets and fully encompassing the interior of less pronounced split winglets - but this is where they look their best.

Back to bad angles, though...

Alaska Airlines has a weird weak spot, and it's from the front and slightly above. All those gorgeous swoops on the winglets and nacelles are basically impossible to see due to their two-dimensional nature, and you can see how the colors don't fully cover the back of the fuselage. My normal policy is to judge liveries by their weakest link, but I honestly almost want to be lenient on this because of how unlikely it is that you're ever going to see an airplane from this angle. The only situations you're ever above an airplane in are ones you're basically never going to encounter as a regular passenger. Don't get me wrong, I still think this could have been designed in a way which eliminates this weak point, but as far as weak points go this is quite excusable. Is that what Thetis thought when she dipped her son in the Styx? Sure, probably, but I stand by my take. For a lot of liveries their worst angle is close to side-on, which is just fully experience-ruining. This? I'm okay with this, relatively speaking.

On the other hand, one of the better angles is one a lot more people will see - below and to one side. The taper of the different bands of color really prevents the awful jarring cutoff that Lufthansa Line and SAS Variation liveries often have, and I feel like they trick the eye into thinking up more of the fuselage is occupied than it really is. Also worth noting is that the grey underside, which resembles a shadow, is actually intentionally painted on, which is lovely. This is a feature common to the Deltalike livery trend that I outline at the start of my Southwest post, which I do think is one of the things that makes me honestly a bit sympathetic to Deltalikes when looking at them next to Lufthansalikes - at least there's an attempt to distribute visual detail evenly. Deltalikes were already a bit dated by 2016 (it was not the longest-lived trend, though it came at a time in my life perfectly positioned to make me think it was more prominent than it was) while SASlikes were on the rise, and this livery has aspects of each, but it feels less like a conflicted result of an intermediate period in dominant trends and more like something which intentionally pulled features from both where it thought they might work best. It's rare that I get this sense from a livery. That's the right way to use trends - as inspiration, not a template.

Alaska Airlines is definitely not a true Deltalike, and I would argue it's not a true SAS Variation either. (For the record, I would consider the 1998 SAS livery a Deltalike, funnily enough!) It incorporates features of both, which makes me feel uncomfortable classifying it definitively as either, though it's definitely more of a SASlike than not. For example, from the side it just is a SASlike, because the grey doesn't go high enough and isn't contrasting enough to be visible except from below. This is in contrast to actual Deltalikes, which have a thin but clearly visible line on the lower side where the underside's block of color bleeds out.

This grey color is also on the engine nacelles, although it is very subtle. This does bring up a minor gripe of mine, which is that the design on the pods cuts off at a bit of an awkwardly sharp angle, usually not worth remarking on but possible to notice from some angles if you are, say, a livery reviewer and you look at these things very closely. What I do like, though, is that the grey on the belly actively connects to the color on the tail, feeling like an extension of it instead of an awkward choice made to mitigate it.

The final specific feature of the livery I think I want to comment on is the wordmark. I really like the wordmark. It's not in their custom typeface, AS Circular, a Roboto-ish sans serif I'm not a gigantic fan of, although I really like their custom web icons. They also use Highest Praise by Adam Ladd, a fairly cheap commercially available font.

As for the wordmark itself, though, I can't seem to find what font it's based on! I have to say the original 1966 logo would be great if another airline were to use it, the 1972 is somehow giving supermarket chain, and the 1990 logo would be great if not for the weird way the K overlaps the A, which just feels sloppy and unprofessional. The 2014 and 2016 incarnations, though, are great. The 2016 one (designed by the firm Hornall Anderson) feels like a great update, just cleaning up the earlier version, though I somewhat miss the lightning-bolt S.

The placement is what I want to talk about, though. Placing a wordmark is more of an art than you might think - I'll show a couple examples of Alaska itself doing a slightly wonky job later - but when Alaska's placement is good it's great. It's one of the least cramped-looking wordmarks I've ever seen, feeling free and airy, spreading upwards above the window line. The descending line on the K and the trailing like on the A both create a feeling of freedom, like it could just keep going but doesn't want to, yet is tastefully restrained and doesn't actually overstep its bounds. I like the solid single color, and I like that it reaches almost to the engines, preventing that empty-forward-half feeling. The one thing I'll comment on for this set of images is that the left-to-right reading direction of English does mean that it looks distinctly worse seen from one side than the other. I much prefer the forward slant, which feels aerodynamic fitting with the motion of the plane, vs the alternative, in which it feels like the wordmark is trying to catch up with the aircraft's nose.

On shorter planes, though, Alaska fumbles a little. They choose to line up the wordmark with the engines instead of with the nose, creating an awkward look when it overlaps the door and nearly reaches the cockpit window. I would have leaned in the other direction were I them. This picture also demonstrates a strange feature which rears its head in certain lightings where the shading on the tailfin image makes it look almost wrinkled. I don't have anything to add to that or know how to solve it, but I need to point it out.

On a very long plane, conversely, the back half of Alaska's planes begins to feel that Lufthansa Line emptiness. The vast, vast majority of their planes are of a moderate enough length that neither issue is too overpowering, but I'm taking a wide view here! Also, the wordmark here seems to not be aligned with the engines, so...what's the idea?

Alaska Airlines is an interesting livery. More interesting than I thought I'd find it for sure. It's not just a SASlike with pleasing colors and a nice wordmark, it's a SASlike with thought put into features that can mitigate the inherent weaknesses of the SASlike. It doesn't always fully succeed, nor does it comprehensively fail, but it definitely tries.

At the end of the day, as usual, I wish there was less white. I'm sure it could have been done. I don't have an obvious solution in mind like I do for some hypothetical redesigns, so it's something I would have to think over and really dig into, but, like, Alaska Airlines makes more than a billion in revenue every year so I think that's reasonable to expect from them.

I initially started using the grading system as a way to categorize liveries without limiting myself to a very specific scale that I'll dither about for years and then change my mind about later, but it's started to end up in that role. I just don't know what better solution there is, so I'm going to continue trying to make it work. Alaska Airlines is a livery that I ultimately think I like, that I think is designed decently, but that is limited by the fact that a really good SASlike is still a SASlike - mostly white and rear-heavy. It's getting the most possible out of a flawed paradigm, and I've been inconsistent so far on how I rate a good SASlike or Lufthansalike because it causes me some legitimate cognitive dissonance.

I'm giving Alaska Airlines a provisional B-.

I think I might downgrade it to C+ later, which is why I say it's provisional. A good execution of something really limited - how do I even rate that? It's somewhere between tepidly good and better-than-average, which is a really awkward place to be. But that's probably a conversation for another day, because this post is long enough and I'm still not done.

Okay, I teased this earlier.

Him. Who is he?

The short answer: nobody knows. Not me, and not Alaska Airlines.

The long answer: deserves its own post. Both because it's long, and because I've hit image limit. And there will be images. Join me in tomorrow's bonus, where we climb our way through the rugged terrain of seemingly-lost history to attempt to put a name to this ubiquitous face.

1946 - The Original

image: Bene Robió

This picture is of a modern plane, OY-KBO “Christian Valdemar Viking” (all SAS planes have names ending in ‘Viking’) wearing a retro livery, but it contains the only part of SAS’s original livery of any interest at all. 

If we zoom in we can take a look at the end of the cheatline, where it morphs into the figurehead of a Viking longship. This is a nifty little touch that represents their national identity and is itself sleek and nicely designed.

And it looks even better on the 747.

It’s also the only notable thing about this old livery, so it’s not worth lingering on for too long. I thought it was worth mentioning because it's neat, but this livery was literally adopted when they very first began flying - in 1946! At that point it was pretty rare to see airlines have any livery at all aside from their name painted on bare metal. This was actually above and beyond for the time.

image: towpilot

It didn't look half bad on the DC-3, either. This was a consistently nice style and for its era I would say it was pretty good. But are we judging by the standards of the time? No.

So, for the time I would probably have given it a high grade. But it is not the time.

So I am giving it a C-.

There are still things to like about the longship design, don't get me wrong. But there is just literally nothing else going on, and it's not enough to have the only piece of your livery that's actually identifiable be so small and easy to miss.

1983 - Belly Stripes

image: Lars Wahlstrom

In 1983 they swapped to this livery, commonly known as “belly stripes”, designed by the iconic Landor Associates, prolific purveyors of liveries. It’s a pretty abrupt change, isn’t it? I like this livery, actually. It’s nice, if understated. The stripes are specifically the colors of the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish flags. Apparently they worried the figurehead would be hard to understand (fair) and the association with Vikings might be bad optics (yet they continued to name their planes this way). 

Like I said, it’s nice. It’s fine.

This, like the original livery, is something that can be evaluated by modern standards or by those of its time. In 1983 majority-white liveries weren’t as ubiquitous as they are now and planes still frequently had cheatlines and all-over color and even bare metal fuselages so the bare white plane with the tiny bit of color and the nice font was actually something of a statement. Even by modern standards it’s executed a lot nicer than many similar liveries, but the market is just so saturated that it only really works in the context of its time, I think. Having a plane be nearly all white is no longer an artistic choice. It's a non-choice. And that's the world I live in, and that has to color how I look at this. But all the same...I can't tear myself away from it. In photographs from the time it is as pristine as newly fallen snow.

So I'm giving it a B.

I like the belly stripes livery. It's a neat and unique way of showcasing the flags. It's cleanly executed. I like that the stripes are diagonal instead of straight and that they're aligned with the letters, which are also in a very nice typeface. I just wish it existed in a less Eurowhite-saturated environment where it could shine to its fullest.

I somehow never noticed how adorably stubby the pre -30 DC-9 models were. Thankfully this has been remedied. Just look at her. Like a really round bird hopping through the air.

I think it’s interesting how, while Lufthansa slowly lost creative interest but only ever became a different design altogether in a sort of Ship of Theseus way, SAS fully overhauled their livery multiple times. They’re definitely trying to find something that works for them, regardless of the cost. They refuse to rest on their laurels. I admire that mindset, and it’s not ended badly so far. 

And then it was 1998. 

If you look very closely you can see something horrible in the distance.

No, okay. It can't be as bad as you're making it out to be, you say. And you are a fool for saying this.

Oh no. Oh no. Sweetheart, what happened to you? 

So, this is really really bad. Really really really bad. This looks like it was designed with the same philosophy I used to design original characters in middle school - oh, I like this color, let me add it without considering the overall balance or composition. This design was made by people who were paid to make it. 

This has almost all the features I hate most in a livery, all the way up to the abrupt color transition at the tailfin, but an additional one: that absolute atrocity right at the front. If you’re confused what I’m referring to, I don’t blame you - they made it nearly invisible. If you squint very hard, though, you can see ‘SCANDINAVIAN’ above the windows and ‘AIRLINES’ below it, completely illegible due to being painted in a silver color barely darker than the main fuselage itself. 

It looks amazingly funny with rear-mounted engines, though. That's her fanny pack.

All I can really say is: why. Why did you do this? Why.  

I am actually somewhat ashamed of how little I noticed this when out in the wild. It’s a testament to the sheer saturation of mostly plain liveries with a hint of red and/or blue that this monstrosity blended into the background and evaded my notice. (And in my defense I’ve never been to one of their focus cities so sightings have only been in passing.)

This might sound harsh, but I'm about to say this and stand by it. Here is a better SAS livery from the same time period.

With the engine covers on it looks like one of those plastic tips they put on toy pistols. Also, doesn't keeping the red engine caps defeat the purpose if you also have red engines, since they're meant to be clearly visible so you don't accidentally try to use the plane with them on? Do they not have a different color available for red engined freaks? Many questions.

That's right, SAS's 1998-2019 livery fails the Star Alliance Test!

What is the Star Alliance Test, you ask? It's very simple. Star Alliance is an airline alliance - basically a club for the world's most elite carriers to hang out in and codeshare. The three major alliances all have special liveries that they might have a couple planes from each of their members wear.

I hate alliance liveries. I think airline alliances should be represented by a little symbol on the airline's standard livery, not the other way around. I would like to know what airline this plane is from before I know if it's a member of OneWorld or SkyTeam. And if I need to know that they usually have a symbol for the alliance somewhere on the plane anyway.

The Star Alliance logo on a SAS ATR 72, directly behind the cockpit window and in front of the door. If you really squint you can even see the words 'Star Alliance' written underneath it.

Star Alliance is my least favorite. SkyTeam's livery actually looks pretty good. OneWorld's is the ugliest at base, but it lets the airline keep some of its branding at the back of the plane, which makes me hate it less. So Star Alliance loses by default. (Let me know if you'd like a full review for these, though.)

The Star Alliance Test has exactly one question. Would I prefer that all this airline's planes were forcibly repainted into Star Alliance liveries instead of allowed to remain in their current state?

In this case, yes. I very much would. And that means there's only one grade I can give to this livery.

F. See me after class.

That's right. Fly away. Ideally to get repainted in something more presentable.

The 2019 Overhaul

(To clarify, when I compared Lufthansa to SAS in my post about them I did not want to imply that they literally copied SAS - their revised livery obviously came out a year earlier, and they were definitely developed privately around the same time to keep up with modernized trends surrounding livery - they’re just similar safe, non-revolutionary concepts that SAS executes a lot better.)

I don’t normally buy the whole ‘the darkness must come before the light’ line of thinking, but SAS clearly does. Because even here, in this abomination, are the building blocks for what would become something reasonably decent. And, in 2019, SAS made that happen. 

Those are engine covers, by the way. There's no red on the engines. There's actually a tasteful silver trim under there.

So, this is what we've achieved. At first glance, it looks pretty similar to Lufthansa, but the closer you examine it the clearer the differences become. 

First, the white fuselage. Well, actually, that’s not the case for SAS. It looks white in bright sunlight, but it’s actually an off-white beige (Pantone 9083C). You can see that in this picture of an SAS plane parked next to a SWISS plane, and when you put a bunch of Scandinavians in crisp white shirts in front of it. 

image source (left): Daniel Ross | image source (right): SAS

I mean, no, it’s not exactly neon pink or anything, but it’s still a noticeable change in tone relative to other planes, and that means it’s a decision someone made. And that makes me happy. 

I think the world has begun to somewhat agree with me on the whole non-integrated-tail-colorblock being bad to look at, because SAS has also extended the stripe of blue down to loop under the rest of the fuselage. Honestly, if I were them I would have made it wider so it covered the full empennage on t-tail models, but that might make it look weird in its own way - I’m not here to design liveries, I’m here to complain about them. I just think it's still a bit too small to make the jet look fully balanced with the big SAS at the front.

The awful red engines have been replaced with a far more tasteful alternative - silver with a blue stripe at the front and silver trim on the very front edge. I like that a lot. No criticisms. 

The silver text has been kept, but it’s been reduced from a bunch of small letters to just a very large SAS, which is a lot clearer even when in low contrast. It’s difficult to nail down my thoughts on this. Obviously it’s an improvement, and I wouldn’t want it to be removed entirely, and I’m not sure if a more solid, emphatic version, maybe in the same blue as the rest of the livery, would actually be better or not. I think I overall like the silver wordmark? As long as it’s not a really bad angle it’s visible enough, and it adds something a bit interesting. Even if it is illegible at least they also have the name on the tail. It probably helps that it’s only three letters long. Still, nobody is going to be confused about what airline this plane belongs to. 

I think the wordmark looks its best on turboprops wearing the livery. I honestly feel like most good jet liveries look awkward on props and vice versa, but this transitions very well. Not many major airlines still fly props, and almost none of them adapt their liveries well to them, but the wordmark fills the space really nicely on the shorter fuselage of the ATR and the high wings break up the line in a way that looks pretty darn nice to me. More airlines need to fly props, and they need to take notes on how to make a livery work for them. 

Aside from the too-small amount of blue, my one real outright complaint is the very small Noto Sans(?, unsure) ‘Scandinavian’ written on the engine nacelles. It feels pointless and looks out of place. It looks extra out of place because the rest of their livery is in Rotis semi-serif, and the combination really clashes. It’s a little baffling, because they certainly have the option of just using the SAS logo again - the only other place they use the full ‘Scandinavian’ is on the belly. My personal suggestion would be bringing back the longship figurehead for the engines, but that’s just me. It just looks more like a watermark than a design feature. 

Look, I never said I loved the SAS livery, but someone clearly designed it. The implementation is still a little shaky in parts, as if the airline is regaining its footing after the red engine years, but it’s stumbling towards being good and it’s just short of the point where it can sit down and rest and reflect on its progress. 

SAS gets an overall grade of C. Which is also what the GPA of the other three came out to, I think! My calculations are admittedly a bit improvised.