Airline forced to repaint hundreds of planes after glaring error
Bosses of one of Europe's biggest airliners have been left red-faced following an underwhelming response from the public over its revamp of the company's colours.
Two separate events at Lufthansa’s hubs in Frankfurt and Munich in February unveiled the airline's new designs, much to the disappointment of crowds who questioned the removal of the company's iconic yellow from its colour scheme, Forbes reported.
The new colours also look "much darker" in real life than in the airline's test environment - causing problems during adverse weather.
Social media was awash with comments questioning the decision to change to a darker shade of navy and replace the yellow logo with a white one on its aircrafts' tails.
“If I were casting aspersions, I might suggest that the people Lufthansa had redo their brand didn't really know about aviation enough to be able to discuss the emotional connection to the yellow and how paint looks under grey sky," aviation writer Jon Walton tweeted.
"Without yellow and blue on the tail, I can't tell Lufthansa from Singapore Airlines... I mean Jet Airways... I mean Ryan Air... on a foggy day," another user wrote.
And the error in judgement could prove costly for the airline giant, after Lufthansa revealed plans to repaint its fleet of approximately 300 newly-designed aircraft just weeks after their initial colour change.
The airline had initially said the designs had been "developed in a complex process with numerous experts" yet they were unable to detect issues with different levels of lighting.
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“After landings in Hong Kong and New York, for example, we realised that the blue paint sometimes looks much darker than it did in the test environment, especially in adverse weather conditions," a Lufthansa spokesperson told German aviation site Airliners.de.
The spokesperson confirmed the new navy will be reapplied with a new paint consisting of less black and more green and red to get the "desired deep blue" colour they envisaged.
The eventual cost of repainting the aircrafts is unknown but will be done over a seven year period, with 40 aircrafts expected to be finished in 2018.
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