Baotou aircraft tops 2017 National Image Aircraft Painting

Qantas decided to show off its countries aboriginal culture and heritage by painting its planes in traditional Aboriginal art. The first plane was painted in 1994 and 3 more have been painted since. A team of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists helped to create its extremely colorful designs.

Alaska Air brought out a plane called the “Salmon-Thirty-Salmon” in 2005 (that’s a play on words for 737 which is the type of plane the airline decorated, a Boeing 737). It was done to celebrate the airlines unique relationship with the people and communities of Alaska and to also promote the state’s seafood industry. The plane was unfortunately repainted in 2011 to the dismay of many and after a year long outcry, the airline brought back the paint job in 2012.

To celebrate and honor the king of Thailand, Thai Airways painted three of its planes with the image of the two traditional royal barges, on either side. These traditional barges stretch from both sides of the plane and even have small people painted on them to add attention to detail as well as traditional Thai temples.

In 2005, Malaysia Airways decorated two of it’s Boeing 747′s with exotic designs based on red Hibiscus flowers. This was done because the Hibiscus flowers are the national flowers of Malaysia. Unfortunately the planes were repainted back to their old schemes in 2008 meaning that this awesome design doesn’t exist anymore.

Germany held the World Cup in 2006 and Lufthansa decided to do their bit…by simply painting a football onto the nose of the plane. Luftansa did this to 40 of its fleet.