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.
Throughout the years, aircraft liveries have been used to deliver all kinds of messages to all types of audiences, but only on rare occasions have they been the vehicle for a very public gratitude message from the airline itself to its own employees.
In February 2020, on Valentine’s Day, just a month shy of what was going to be among the worst periods in commercial aviation’s history, Delta Air Lines made its largest employees’ profit-sharing announcement with the unveiling of a fuselage-long “Thank You” note on an Airbus A321 aircraft.
On that day, Delta Air Lines revealed its intention to distribute $1.6bn of its profits to its employees and did so, painting a large “Thank You” on the side of one of its aircraft.
A New Airbus
The aircraft chosen for this unusual ceremony was an Airbus A321, registered as N391DN, which had been delivered less than three months earlier, on Dec. 20, 2019. The aircraft was configured for domestic routes in a three-class layout with 20 First class seats, 29 Delta Comfort+ seats, and 143 Economy seats for a total capacity of 192 passengers.
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