The new livery is unlike ANYTHING you’ve ever seen before.
German leisure carrier Condor has seemingly reinvented the aircraft livery. Those fed up with the euro white livery being adopted by so many carriers these days will rejoice as the German airline has instead opted for beach towel-like vertical stripes along the entire fuselage.
Condor clearly had to think about timing with the reveal of its new corporate identity. The airline’s new livery is enough of a head-turner that it would’ve been categorized as an April Fool if it had been released on Friday. However, it seems as though the stripy paint scheme, available in five colors, is legit and here to stay.
Inspired by summer?
It seems as though Condor has taken inspiration from the summer holidays with its latest livery concept. According to the carrier, the stripy design set to adorn its aircraft is inspired by “parasols, bath towels, and beach chairs”.
The livery will be applied to aircraft in five colors,
- Yellow (Sunshine)
- Red (Passion)
- Blue (Sea)
- Green (Island)
- Beige (Beach)
According to Condor, these colors will stand for the diversity of the carrier’s guests, employees, and opportunities to discover the world. The German leisure carrier isn’t the only airline to update its livery with various colors. Icelandair’s new paint scheme also comes with five variations, though the differences are much more subtle.
The livery will be rolled out across the fleet gradually. Around 80% of the airline’s airplanes will have it by 2024. Condor officially launched the new design on an undelivered Airbus A330neo in Toulouse, though an older aircraft will be debuting the new livery tomorrow. D-AIAD is an eight-year-old Airbus A321. It will debut the livery tomorrow on a flight to Lanzarote with the yellow variation of the new livery. According to data from FlightRadar24.com, the jet flew out to Maastricht to be repainted on March 23rd.
Over the coming weeks, five more aircraft from the Airbus A320 and Boeing 757 families will be painted, presumably at least one in each color. The six aircraft are predominantly scheduled to fly to Mallorca, Greece, the Canary Islands, and Egypt.
Updating the entire brand
Though the new livery is the only thing revealed by Condor so far, the brand update won’t stop there. The airline announced that everything from crew uniforms to boarding passes and even staff ID cards would find their way to the new branding.
Why refresh the brand?
But why is Condor refreshing the brand at all? It is all to do with something that happened around two and a half years ago. When the Thomas Cook brand collapsed in late 2019, Condor was able to keep flying. The airline was quick to replace the Thomas Cook logo on the tail of its aircraft, though planes have essentially been flying with the Thomas Cook livery ever since. The new corporate identity is the latest move away from the airline’s Thomas Cook history.
Commenting on the change, Condor’s CEO, Ralf Teckentrup, remarked,
“Condor has undergone a transformation over the past two and a half years: From a subsidiary of a vertically integrated travel group to an independent airline that looks back proudly on its history and tradition, while at the same time embarking on the path to the future. We want to express this unmistakably through our corporate identity: Condor is vacation and Condor is unmistakable – like our new design, with which we are now launching into the future.”
Source: Simple Flying