The ‘Salmon-Thirty-Salmon’ and the Rise of ‘Specialty Aircraft’

When I was a kid, for a short time I used kid logic to justify the safety of flying in airplanes: I thought that if they were painted with at least one color that occurred regularly in the sky, they belonged in the sky. Hence, no crashes. In the ‘70s, that seemed to cover pretty much every airplane I could see at LAX, the airport where my dad worked and I spent a lot of time. If I still employed this sort of logic, I might now have some issues with flying. As USA Today’s Ben Mutzabaugh points out—and shows off in a terrific photo gallery—from “Delta’s breast-cancer-awareness-themed plane to Alaska Air’s ‘Spirit of Disneyland’ jet, U.S. airlines have been busy rolling out specially painted aircraft over the past few years.”

Yesterday U.S. Airways dedicated a black-and-gold Pittsburgh Steelers Airbus A319, the fourth in a series of planes the carrier has done up in the colors of an NFL team. That comes on the heels of, among other designs, Alaska Air’s government subsidized Salmon-Thirty-Salmon.

To be fair, many of these new “specialty aircraft” do have colors that occur naturally in the sky—I’ve seen the pink of the breast-cancer-awareness-themed plane, for instance, in sunsets. I’d imagine that, if I were a kid seeing these designs, I might instead have issues tied to some of the images on the planes. Have you ever seen, say, a salmon at 35,000 feet that wasn’t on a dinner plate in first class?

Related on World Hum:
* Eva Airways Harnesses the Power of Hello Kitty

Photo via Alaska Airlines.

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