#stopovers

When I say that I don't mean naming types of airplanes. I mean giving the airplanes names. A lot of airlines do it. Back in the day you had your Clipper This, Flagship That, Star of the Whatsit, so on. Lots of airlines name theirs after places. Aer Lingus names theirs after Irish saints. SAS names their Vikings. FedEx Express gives theirs human names, like Gabriel, Richard, JobEdokat, and Meredith.

The year is 2023 at time of writing. Clipper This, Flagship That, and Star of the Whatsit are now all relics of a distant past where a plane ticket cost more than some cars and airports sold life insurance at kiosks. That age is long past. Delta, United, American...all cowards, their airplanes long unnamed. Though the practice is alive and well elsewhere, for some reason it has largely gone dormant in the United States. There are few exceptions, but there are exceptions, and there is one in particular which stands out from the rest. Just one carrier on a mission and their 289 individually named flying machines.

I would like to present you with a curated selection of things which jetBlue has named their airplanes. There are many more - 289, to be specific. Take a look through them all if you care to. But this is a list of my favorites. Just a bit of appreciation for a true titan of aircraft-naming in an era where the art seems all but lost.

Roses Are Red, This Plane is Blue (N3104J)

Aruba, Jamaica, Blue I Wanna Take Ya (N2016J)

Blue's That Girl? (N997JL)

Don't Hate Me 'Cause I'm Bluetiful (N996JL)

Don't Mind If I Blue (N971JL)

Blue Kid On The Block (N913JB)

1. Fly JetBlue 2. Repeat Step 1 (N807JB)

Shantay, Blue Stay (N794JB)

#Follow @JetBlue (N334JB)

Enough about me...let's talk about blue (N712JB)

Big blue people seater (N705JB)

Bippity, Boppity, Blue (N565JB)

Blue-yah! (N187JB)

Badda Bing Badda Blue (N534JB)

FuhgeddaBlueDit (N3113J)

Boogie Woogie Bluegle Boy (N3062J)

My Other Ride is a JetBlue A320 (N329JB, an Embraer E190)

My Other Ride is a JetBlue E190 (N793JB, an Airbus A320)

And, my personal favorite:

How's My Flying? Call 1-800-JETBLUE (N715JB)

Featured Offers ‘Staycation Amsterdam’

You're right. I WILL do this for fun, because this is fun. Not based on livery, since they're mostly white with blue wings - just how much I like them. I'll be adding a rating out of 10 for each one because I think that's the tradition for this sort of thing.

Apple - 4/10

I mean, because I have an iPhone this is my default conception of an airplane emoji - I think it's fine, I just find it a bit offputting how they model the individual flaps and cockpit windows but the rest of it is a white airbrushed tube. It's a weird contrast.

It's fine, I think. Acceptable. I maybe think emojis by default aren't the most aesthetically pleasing.

Google Noto Color Emoji - 4.5/10

I think this is a slight improvement over the Apple version because of the more consistent stylization. It's also a little more contemporary, since most airliners that are flying now have two engines. I like that they added a few windows and highlights to keep the cabin interesting, and I think it's a bit...something that they took off the flaps but added flap track fairings. Cockpit windows look awful though.

Samsung - 2/10

This is a bit more of a realistic shape for an airplane but for some reason I don't like it. Maybe it's the fact that you can barely recognize that there's a tailfin at all, or the cockpit window looking weirdly...shiny? I think what gets me the most, though, is that those engines look like Super Mario pipes.

Microsoft - 1/10

She's a little...phallic somehow. I just think a top-down view of an airplane is almost always going to look worse if you make it super round and blobby. On the bright side, it's still recognizable as a plane.

WhatsApp - 7.5/10

I really like the way this one is red. Way to stand out in a crowd. It's also quite realistic without giving up on being stylized. My one issue is with the cockpit windows, which look a bit out-of-place and weird. This seems to be a common point of failure for this sort of emoji. Also, I'm unsure if this is meant to be a two-engined 747, but if it is points off for those not existing.

Twitter - 6/10

I hate to ever hand it to Twitter but this is just solid. That's an airplane, just a very simplified and round one. Even the cockpit windows on this one look okay.

Facebook - 3.5/10

Maybe airplane emojis with airbrush shading just look bad to me. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the shape of this but I don't think they differentiated the tailfin from the fuselage enough. It looks like a stub. Also, what is up with that miserably short wing chord?

Telegram - 7/10

I mean, it looks like a 3D version of the Apple one, but it's surprising how much making it 3D improves it. Plus, gotta hand it to them deciding their emoji was being flown by Tex Johnston. I admire that sort of verve.

Microsoft Teams - 0/10

On the flipside, animating this one and making it 3D makes it so much worse! It looks like it was made right when people just figured out that 3D animation was a thing that was possible to do, back in the 50s or something. And boy are those pixels crunchy - I wouldn't mind this if it weren't already heinous. Seriously, how is that tailfin even attached?

Skype - 10/10

Now this I really like. Most of these are impossible to assign a model to but this distinctly looks to me like one of the earlier, stubbier 737s, just really short with a pointy nose, and she's waving at you. Crisp, nice smooth animation, just fantastic.

Twitter Emoji Stickers - 0/10

Looks bad. One of the few of these which are very easy to recognize as a specific model of airplane - this is clearly a 747, based on the inclusion of the hump. There is a reason basically none of the others are trying to be a 747. Adding a weird lump to the front of your emoji doesn't really make it any less weird-looking, and rendering a plane from above tends to be weird-looking already. It looks like she was stung by a bee.

JoyPixels - 6.5/10

As with the WhatsApp red, I appreciate anything setting itself aside in color, so I have to compliment the choice of this sort of toothpastey green. This is one of the better simplified airplanes we've gone over today, and the only thing I really dislike is that it has the same issues with the tailfin Facebook does.

Toss Face - 0/10

I can barely tell this is supposed to be an airplane. It makes me want to, excuse the mental image, toss face.

JoyPixels Animations - 10/10

Now THIS is what I'm talking about! Just a nice little pixel aircraft, doing the same sort of smooth wriggling as the Skype airplane - no criticisms.

Sony PlayStation - small/10

Adequate, but too small to really assess further - but the fact that I don't dislike anything about it is honestly a credit at this point.

Noto Emoji Font - 3.5/10

This just looks like the Samsung emoji but rendered with plain lines. Removing detail from these tends to improve them.

OpenMoji - 0/10

Oh, no, I take it back! Too few details! It's like a torpedo with wings awkwardly stapled on. A really phallic one at that.

emojidex - what the hell/10

I think this more or less looks fine, and the livery it has also looks fine, but I'm so thrown off by the fact that I don't think this is a real airplane. I am obviously not an authority on every model of airplane ever built but I'm reasonably sure this isn't a real one. It most resembles a BAe 146/Avro RJ, the only four-engined t-tail plane intended for passengers rather than heavy cargo. But the 146/RJ has high wings, located above the cabin windows, so...what is this airplane? What does emojidex know that they're not telling us?

Messenger - 7/10

While not ugly per se, it's a bit futuristic for my taste. Still, the choice to model it from a position other than directly from the top avoids a lot of the pitfalls that make many of these so bad to look at.

LG - 4/10

Boring? Yeah, without question. But this is just a good representation of an airplane, and at this point I'll accept that. Does the tail thing, though.

HTC - 3/10

Something about the way this is shaped makes this look more like a rocketship than an airplane. Or a Convair Pogo.

SoftBank - 5/10

A decent pictoral representation of an airplane. See: LG. Fixes the tail thing.

Docomo - 5.5/10

Also a decent pictoral representation of an airplane, but I think rendering it in silhouette gets rid of many of the pitfalls associated with airplane emojis. No details to mess up, just the shape of an airplane. Why do the majority of these have four engines? Seriously, there are only three four-engine airliners in passenger service right now. Have the people designing these not flown since the early aughts?

au by KDDI - 2.5/10

Okay, I know I've been saying being a good representation of an airplane is good enough but this is just simplifying too far. This isn't an emoji, it's a unicode character.

Mozilla - 1/10

Okay, okay, I've talked about liveries. Sort of seems like that might be the thing that I do. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention something else - potentially the most revolutionary move in aviation since the invention of the airline itself.

This...is actual promotional material for a real airline, that flew planes for money, and was ostensibly a company. This is a screenshot from this actual airline’s announcement that their new plane will be registered TF-GAY, made over Snapchat. We live in such an incredibly normal and plausible universe. This was posted by a company which, at the time, filed taxes and had employees. Said employees probably wore suits. They had offices. They were registered with the Icelandic government. They flew airplanes daily and this was their job. They posted this on Snapchat. This was widely covered by news. People discussed this as a massive step forward for LGBT equality. It was posted on Snapchat by a real airline.

TF-GAY was an Airbus A330-300 formerly operated by Icelandic low-cost airline WOW air, given her registration as a shattering gesture of LGBT inclusivity in the same league as Stonewall and Obergefell v Hodges. She was just a regular A330 painted in a regular WOW air livery which happened to be registered as TF-GAY. 

I’ll be honest, I don’t think this is within the scope of this blog to rate, but if it were I would give it an A+. This is such a silly and pathetic gesture that I loop right back over into adoring it. The Snapchat announcement (I forget Snapchat exists, never mind imagine that it might be used by an airline) is so absurd that it may well be the thing that convinces me that I’m actually a Boltzmann brain because this could not possibly be real. I love TF-GAY. I’m very sad WOW air went bankrupt because it means I can never fly on TF-GAY. (She is now stored, having most recently flown for Batik Air with an unremarkable registration, though she was registered TC-LOL in the interim, which feels worth noting.) 

Very Big Girl

Tiny Stubby Girl

and of course my favorite airline, Safety Training

That livery really assists the later/longer 747s in a trait I would call Grabbability - you should be able to just wrap your hand around her.

The safety training airplane is apparently a decommissioned airframe used to train first responders for on-airport emergencies. Some exciting stuff was happening at the airport that day!

Flown! Although the idea of them putting the plane in a truck or something to deliver it is very funny. Parts of aircraft (ie wings) are sometimes transported in an outsize cargo aircraft but otherwise they're just relocated by flying themselves. They're big girls now. They can leave the factory and go off to their new homes.

A fun exception is in the case of spaceplanes which can't really get anywhere themselves without a rocket strapped on. The world's largest aircraft, An-225 Mriya, was developed for the express purpose of giving the Buran orbiter a piggyback ride.

There are a lot of different styles of faience (pottery utilizing white tin glaze) peculiar to very specific places, and one such style is Delftware, from the Dutch city of Delft. Although this term can technically refer to any pottery made in this style regardless of color, Delftware is traditionally known for being white and blue (a common motif in pottery in general, thanks to cobalt oxide being practically indestructible).

Blue and white! Just like KLM's livery! Yet another thing they could have capitalized on but didn't - there was even a Delftware-inspired design representing the Netherlands back when British Airways was doing their World Tails - but that's beside the point. Apparently if you fly Business Class on KLM (their highest class, they don't have First Class) to a whole other continent they'll give you one of these.

image: KLM

Their Delft Blue houses are little pottery sculptures of actual house façades in the Netherlands. That little nozzle sticking out where the chimney would be is actually the point of entry to some Dutch gin. People don't really care about the gin as much as they do about the houses, though. There's one design for every year KLM has existed, and they release a new one on their birthday (7 October). People collect these. Apparently there's an app.

Way back when aviation was still young and glamorous and basically just treated like a new type of luxury ocean liner airlines would all name their airplanes and they generally had themes. TWA would name their planes "Star of [Place]". I can't find any mention of when exactly this practice died out but the last explicit confirmation of them doing it that I could find was in 1983 with N610TW "Star of Geneva".

This wasn't uncommon. American Airlines had Flagships and United had Mainliners and these both died out too. Sure, they both have incomprehensibly huge fleets now, but that's no excuse in my opinion. Name your thousand large flying daughters. Name them. There were the Canadian Pacific Empresses and the Piedmont Pacemakers and of course there were the Pan Am Clippers.

There's still a few really great naming traditions out there, though. Like I mentioned before a lot of flag carriers do cities but I think the most stately is Air India's habit of naming theirs after emperors. I believe EgyptAir at least sometimes do pharaohs as well. A lot of airlines do influential philosophers and poets and such. And jetBlue of course does silly funny jokes. National and FedEx do regular human names (you know, if I were the owner of National I think if the plane I named after my wife were to crash in a horrible accident I would not rename another plane after her because it would be tempting fate, but that's just me). I find it inexplicably hilarious that the plane involved in FedEx flight 705 was named John Peter Jr.. What a hilarious name for a DC-10 that got barrel rolled and went back to service for another twenty years like nothing happened.