Flying Colors! Creative Paint on Airliners

"QUANTUM SHOT" #580
Link - by A. Abrams

The sky is blue, so why your plane should be simply white? Paint it in all the colors of a sunset... and pretty up the skies!

Some airline companies are clearly out-painting competition with their groovy air fleet. Often called "aircraft livery", such special paint schemes can be exciting and even inspirational. Japan Airlines with their Disney jumbo jets comes to mind, in particular, plus Australian Qantas Airways has been commissioning famous artists to come up with exotic art for their "birds".

On this page we feature some particularly wild and even outrageous airliner paint schemes, from all over the world - send us more examples you spot in the airports or even if you had opportunity to fly inside one of these yourself...

SkyEurope Airlines smile in the sky, photo by Peter de Jong

Or a wicked mummy image (Astraeus - Iron Maiden plane)? Why not! -

(images credit: Sergio Mota and Tom Turner)

Art Planes and Special Event Promotions

First off, Qantas unveiled truly mind-boggling painting scheme for its jumbo jets in "Flying Art" series... (more info) -

Photo courtesy Nathan Zalcman, Arliners.net

Qantas even used some groovy lighting to make a memorable presentation for the delivery of its first A380 -

(image credit: Rob Neil, Pacific Wings Magazine)

Lufthansa's soccer nose - more info, and the whole 2006 FIFA World Championship team painted on TunisAir Airbus A320:

image credit: ChW

JAL "Samurai" national soccer team, photo by Farhad Piran

AirAsia Manchester United soccer players, photo by GlobalPics and EuroFly's Airbus, photo by Mario J. Craig

Aeroflot's Boeing 767-300 "Russian Olympic Team" -

(image via)

From abstract art to portraits of famous people -

Austrian Airlines, photo by Christian Hauser

Smiling faces, and overall cute demeanor -

German Wings "Berlin" plane, photo D. Lausberg, another German Wings smile - photo by kamil Macniak

Zsuzsanna Laky (Miss Europe 2003), photo by Toni Marimon, and "Adriana" plane from SkyEurope Airlines - photo by Eduard Brantjes

Air New Zealand "Lord of the Rings" livery, photos by Michael Carter, Ryan C. Umphrey

Animated characters! -

JAL Boeing 747-446D and other "Dream Express" variations, photos by Kazutaka Yagi, Avibear, Andrew Hunt

Most colorful Dream Express, in two different flavours! -

(image credit: Simon Brooke)

All Nippon Airways, photo by Michael F. McLaughlin

Another All Nippon Airways, photo by Kota Murahashi

(image credit: Shotaro Shimizu)

(image credit: Xu Zheng)

Simpsons livery, photo by AirNikon

Commercial Branding and Advertising on Planes

Did you know there was a "Pepsi" Concorde? - more info here -

(image credit: Stefan Bjärkemark)

Virgin Blue (from Australia) advertising Gillette - more info:

(images via 1)

Bulgari Designer Watches, photo by Don Boyd - and Avis car in the skies, photo by Mark A. Harris

Malaysia Airlines, photo by Brendan Vanderwerf, and "Sleep Well" plane - photo by Trevor Mulkerrins

Dragon Air, photo by Avibear

Alaskan Air - and Horizon Air cool livery, photos via

Even NATO joined in with their own creative military plane livery:

(image credit: Michael Balter)

... Incredible painted German "Tornado" jets formation! -

(image credit: Ronnie Stiffel)

Apparently you have to be very careful where you place your artwork - mind these window openings! In some cases they appear to be placed strategically, covering this girl areas? -

(image credit: Timo Breidenstein)

... and in others, it's clearly a "fail" situation - see the ugly window openings instead of nice eyes of girl on the right: