Airplane Name Game
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What’s in an airplane name? Branding, creativity and popular opinion, turns out. We explore how the different names for aircraft and airliners are chosen. For more, read Cameron Watt’s “An Airplane Named Desire” in The Education Issue.
MAIDEN VOYAGEURS
All of KLM’s MD-11s were named after powerful women. Mother Teresa, Marie Curie and Florence Nightingale are among the 10 women chosen. The last MD-11 flight, made in October 2014, displayed the name “Audrey Hepburn.”
DREAM NAME
The Dreamliner, Boeing’s 787 twin-engine airliner, has become a household name, but it almost wasn’t given that moniker. Three other names – eLiner, Global Cruiser and Stratoclimber – were also on Boeing’s shortlist. If it had been up to Boeing’s employees, the 787 may have been named Global Cruiser, but after putting it to a public vote, Dreamliner won by a small margin.
COLBERT NATION
Virgin America’s inaugural flight from New York to San Francisco in 2007 was on “Air Colbert” an A320 named after Stephen Colbert, the Comedy Central satirical-pundit.
POLITICAL RIVAL “E”
Concorde’s name reflects treaty between the United Kingdom and France that led to its construction. A simple amalgamation of the French word “concorde” and the English word “concord,” meaning harmony, union and agreement in both languages. Ironically, the “e” was temporarily removed by UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in response to a dispute with French leader Charles de Gaulle, but it was permanently restored in 1967.
BINARY IN BLUE
JetBlue promoted their in-flight “Fly-Fi” Internet service with an Airbus A320 repainted in binary code and called: CONNECTED TO 01000010 01001100 01010101 01000101. True to form, the binary translates to “blue.”
GRACELAND’S CONVAIR
The Convair 880, a narrow-body jet produced by Convair (a division of General Dynamics) is simple and to-the-point, but its history is far from it. The airliner was initially called the Skylark, then had its named changed to Golden Arrow. Eventually name-bestowers settled upon the Convair 600 and then 880 – a reflection of the airlines top speeds in mph. Elvis Presley bought one in 1975 and named it Lisa Marie, after his daughter – and it could be yours now, if you’re in the celebrity plane memorabilia market.
SEISMIC INFLUENCES
Iceland’s volcanoes might be remembered for disrupting air traffic in 2010, but Icelandair makes the most of them: offering in-flight views of the lava-spewing formations and naming their entire fleet after them.