It is with some sadness that the iconic Pacific Jade (Teal) along with the Global Dark Blue corporate colours will be resigned to history...in favour of black and white.
The distinctive koru will remain.
Kiwis still feel passionate about the majority government owned airline and will have a strong opinion about a change of branding - Any brand that evokes such a passionate following must be doing something right.
Public reaction to the evolution of the promotional All Black livery introduced since the Rugby World Cup would have been closely monitored by Air New Zealand.
The airline needed to freshen-up its corporate look and painting it black seems to be a safe and tested option that is likely to attract favour with the New Zealand public.
I've got mixed feelings about the new "less is more" style. There seems to be no middle ground with the use of black as a style statement - it can either be refined and elegant or plain and boring.
It will be interesting how Air New Zealand's new black and white livery will compare when parked on an airport tarmac amongst other airlines that have a rainbow of multi-coloured designs,
"This new look will be rolled out in stages from later this year. It will be painted on to its 103 aircraft starting later this year and take 18 months to roll out across the fleet. Its “koru” logo stays on the tail but airline’s historic teal color will disappear. For plane aficionados, if this new design looks familiar, that because Air NZ has gone for a fern design before, when it sponsored the national rugby team All Blacks for the world cup in 2011 and rolled out an all black themed aircraft.
This comes as the airline also announced a tie up with Tourism New Zealand to undertake joint marketing activity to promote the destination to key international markets (and here we thought it always had a deal there). Both of the orgs will invest more than $10 million over the next 12 months to promote NZ in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, North America, the UK and Europe."
