53 Comments

  1. Agree with Zach, the logo and wordmark are nice, although I’ll miss the Helvetica, but the tail is atrocious. It looks like something that would be on a bad bathing suit.

  2. Not really excited about the logo change but very happy it didn’t incorporate the United logo.

  3. The tail is a perfect target for terrorists. “Hey look!, it’s the Americans! let’s shoot it down!”

  4. I like it – all of it! Not as much as I like Delta’s clean cut look, but this is a drastic improvement over the classic 1968 livery.

  5. Academic since they’ll merge or be taken over and then get to repaint. Really ugly tail, though.

  6. Not loving the tail. The rest is fine. I think I would like the tail better if it were a flowing flag ala Delta a few liveries ago. Or the logo should go on the tail. Something. I mean…. It’s not bad, but for all the hype, it’s kinda blah.

  7. Nothing wrong with a new livery every so often but they should have found a way to keep the Eagle.

  8. It looks like they spent tons of time and money to develop the logo. I think it is really cool. The tail was an after thought. it kind of looks like Dr Sues’s hat.

  9. I like the tail. I don’t like the odd blue color they used, the previous dark navy was much better. And prefer the old font, but the change is only a but subtle. Logo? ehhh, its ok, the other one was tired.

  10. Terrible execution. The logo and wordmark are at war with each other. You’ve got a sleek icon (unfortunately incorporating a gradient) with rounded edges and then you’ve got an angular typeface. There’s no unity and the two pieces aren’t working together. The tail of the plane is awful. I understand that representing the flag, if it were on the plane it would be flowing the direction they painted it but it looks like a backwards US Flag. Also disappointed with the color they’ve chosen to paint the body. When you’ve had a mark as iconic and timeless as the Vignelli-designed logo, it would have been difficult to live up to that legacy, but they missed the mark far more than I expected.

  11. It’s worse than lipstick on a Pig, it Blahhhhhhh!!!! The Red, White and Blue stripes was just not significantly recognizable around the world… It help break up the bigness of the huge fuselage skin… Kinda looks like a huge silver whale… I can see why they wanted to keep it a secret… They must have waited till all the 5th graders art class entrees had arrived. For some reason… the Flag Tail Stripes sorta resembles the Tail Flag on the US Airways Aircraft… Does this mean that the American Airlines and US Airways merger is officially in place????

  12. why add the weight of all of the white paint? Futile rebranding with a merger in the wings?

  13. The tail is dreadful. I agree the rest of it looks kind of retro and could come to like it. I painted a lot of planes for Flight Simulator for a fictional airline and if I did this it would not be one of my better works.

  14. A larger question would be to ask why the AA administration believed it was necessary to spend the time and energy to create a new logo and look while coming out of bankruptcy. Many people will have been hurt by the bankruptcy and it would seem to be a slap in their collective faces to be spending money this way. And to what end? Will more people choose AA because of that tail? Are they trying to overcome their really bad press in such a superficial manner? Does it make them more attractive for a takeover? To me it just indicates how truly bankrupt their management is.

  15. I agree with many others: the tail is too much for me, but I like the overall look of the plane and the logo by itself.

  16. I fully agree with Eric Welch above…

    Logo changes never come cheap, especially when we are talking about painting large aluminum pressurized tubes.

    With a possible merger in the not too distant future, this just doesn’t make economic or common sense.

  17. Logo is awful. Belongs on a toy box. The rest is a big zero. As a package it’s just a great big nothing.

  18. So very sad that they ruined a great iconic brand…. logo is a copy of greyhound…. tail is a mix of cubana and colgan… just a shame they would do this… what a way to continue to make sure that American fails.

  19. Nay! I think it shows what is important to AA management: style over substance! It is typical of the pathetic management ethos common in so many large companies these days – focusing on superficial makeovers instead of changing troubling fundamentals. Competent leadership utilizes what they have(they are in bankrupcy protection for pete sake!)and focuses on substantive improvement. The dressing can come later…

  20. Keep the old paint job!!! Look at classics such as KLM and Singapore Air ….still going strong….

    They could have slightly tweaked the old paint job as polishing a non-aluminum 787 doesn’t work…

    I like the comment on the terrorists….

    Plus foreign passengers might be put off flying something so brazenly patriotic that will be the #1 terrorist target….just like staying in a Marriot Hotel in Pakistan or Jakarta…..good for sleepless nights (Great hotel …too much of a terrorist target in those places)

  21. It’s bad, bad, bad, all bad.

    The airline is bankrupt. What are they thinking with spending money on a new look? The classic look was exactly that — classic. Everybody recognized an American Airlines plane.

    There’s also another long term economic issue. All of that paint adds extra weight to the planes, so the fuel bill for American has just gone up.

    This makes absolutely no sense. Really a senseless and ugly makeover.

  22. Awful, I’ve now seen it in person and it is a big gray flem ball. A total nothing. Was there some business benefit to destroy the brand before a merger?

  23. It wasn’t the old livery that made American stale – instead it was the new way of doing almost everything wrong. Bring back the full eagle and get rid of the dated tail livery. Reach back to the best of the past.

  24. Looks like crap. Will miss the shiny chrome and stripes. It’s blah and the tail is ugly!

  25. The flag on the tail only has 12 stripes… And that’s not really all that American to have the flag done wrong… Just saying

  26. Awful. Why take an iconic trademark, imortalized in cinema and popular culture over the decades, and flush it completely down the toilet for no good reason? I mean why even keep the name American Airlines, at that point? Maybe Daimler-Benz will change the three-point star trademark, just to try something new and fresh. Or perhaps MGM will ditch the lion for another zoo animal. All great ideas.

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