¿Why is Aerolíneas Argentinas painting a plane with the iconic design of the 80s?

In a few weeks Aerolíneas Argentinas will receive back at its base, after a visit to the workshop, one of its planes repainted with the design that the company used in the 80s. Two dark blue stripes run all the way through the fuselage until they end up in the tail with a big double a and the legend of the brand, in print, in front of the wings.

It will be a way of celebrating the company’s 70th anniversary and, as they explain, it is a widespread practice in the industry and valued by aviation fans, who for years have been coordinating different groups in social networks where they remember previous designs and ask for the return of the retro 80s livery (design and colors that identify the company to which that plane belongs).

“It is something that the main airlines of the world do because it is a way to show the industry and the passengers the durability of the company throughout the years, which is not so usual”, they explain in the company. Last year, Avianca commemorated its 100th anniversary with an A320 painted with the design of the 1950s and British Airways printed retro designs on four of its aircraft for the 100 years. KLM also celebrated its 90th anniversary by decorating a Boeing 737-800 with an earlier design.

The aircraft chosen by Aerolíneas Argentinas to paint is a Boeing 737-700, registration LV G00, which is used for domestic and regional flights. It is one of the only two aircrafts owned by the company (the rest is under leasing modality, that is to say, for rent) and arrived in the country with the design of the time when the company was managed by the Marsans Group.

The plane has already entered the workshop of the Fábrica Argentina de Aviones, in Córdoba, and according to the company it will be ready in the next 15 days. It is expected that the reactivation of air transport will find this aircraft already active and as one of its attractions.

According to the company, the initiative will not have “any extra cost” because it will take advantage of a credit left by the previous management in the also state-owned Fadea, of US$200,000, which will be enough not only to paint the plane retro but also, in the framework of the merger, to paint six of the 26 Embraer of Austral with the design of Aerolíneas Argentinas. The rest will be adapted over the next year and a half.

The design was chosen after the company conducted an informal survey among staff and on social networks. According to them, it was installed in people’s imagination because it was used for a long time, from the mid-70s to the mid-90s and because, among other milestones, it is the plane that mobilized troops to Malvinas and brought Diego Maradona with the 1986 World Cup.

The design will be exactly the same as that of the 80s, adapted to the new aircraft, and will even keep the large double AA in the tail, an abbreviation that Aerolíneas Argentinas cannot use since it lost a lawsuit against American Airlines in which the American company kept the letters. In the aviation code, the flag carrier is AR. “We made a special request to American Airlines, explaining that it was a special design for the anniversary, and they authorized us to use it,” they detailed.

By La Nación