Livery of the Week: Swiss’ First Airbus A350-900

Editor’s Note: AirlineGeeks is proud to present our ‘Livery of the Week’ series. Every Friday, a team member will share an airline livery, which can be from the past, present, or even a special scheme. Some airline liveries are works of art. The complexity associated with painting around critical flight components and the added weight requires outside-the-box thinking from designers. The average airliner can cost upwards of $200,000 to repaint, creating a separate aircraft repainting industry as a result. 

Have an idea for a livery that we should highlight? Drop us a line. 

Lufthansa-owned Swiss International Air Lines has recently expanded its long-haul fleet with the introduction of a new aircraft type. The backbone of Swiss’ long-haul operation was represented by four ageing Airbus A340-300, 10 Airbus A330-300, and 12 Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, but with the four-engine A340s fast approaching their retirement age, Lufthansa Group decided to move 10 A350-900 currently on its order book to the Swiss flag carrier.

On June 24, the first aircraft of the series was presented in Toulouse with a special livery called “SWISS Wanderlust.”

Swiss Airbus A350-900 “SWISS Wanderlust” (Photo: Swiss)

Stickered, Not Painted

Instead of painting the livery on the fuselage, the designs have been applied using a special certified film. It is the first time an Airbus aircraft has had stickers applied to such a large part of the fuselage.

The artwork is made up of nine artistic motifs inspired by nine iconic towns or cities in Switzerland (Basel, Berne, Geneva, Locarno, Lucerne, Montreaux, St. Moritz, Wengen, and Zurich) and was rendered using 360 precisely cut foils covering a total area of 380 square meters (approx. 4100 square feet).

Production phase of Airbus A350-900 “SWISS Wanderlust” (Photo: Swiss)

The aircraft will enter service at the end of the summer after completing the needed checks and test flights. It is currently registered as F-WZHI, but once delivered to Swiss, it will be renamed HB-IFA. It will be configured in a premium-heavy configuration with four cabins: four seats in First Class, 45 in Business Class, 38 in Premium Economy, and 156 in Economy, for a total of 243 seats. It will be powered by two Rolls Royce Trent XWB engines, and it will be named after the city of Lausanne, which is curiously not featured in any of the motifs of this special fuselage.

Looking for a new airplane model? Head over to our friends at the Midwest Model Store for a wide selection of airlines and liveries.

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Vanni Gibertini

Vanni fell in love with commercial aviation during his undergraduate studies in Statistics at the University of Bologna, when he prepared his thesis on the effects of deregulation on the U.S. and European aviation markets. Then he pursued his passion further by obtaining a Master’s Degree in Air Transport Management at Cranfield University in the U.K. followed by holding several management positions at various start-up carriers in Europe (Jet2, SkyEurope, Silverjet). After moving to Canada, he was Business Development Manager for IATA for nine years before turning to his other passion: sports writing.

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