Three weeks ago we brought you news of Lufthansa’s new livery – the first major change in 30 years.
Since then there has been a fair amount of criticism from the airline’s customers together with some readers of Business Traveller. Lufthansa responded to that criticism, and you can read that in this story…
Lufthansa: response to new livery “predominantly positive”
Now it appears that Lufthansa management has listened and is also unhappy with elements of the colours and especially with the blue tone.
The news was broken by Germany’s Airliners.de
It is reported that management had become concerned with the intensity of the blue colour which, although it is acceptable in bright conditions, may appear almost black in poor lighting or in winter months.
A Lufthansa spokesperson told Airliners.de “After landings in Hong Kong and New York, we realised that the blue paint sometimes looks much darker than it did in the test environment and especially in adverse weather conditions.”
Over the next few weeks a Lufthansa team will attempt to design the new blue “so it is perceived as blue even in unfavourable lighting conditions,” said the spokesperson.
To date only a very few Lufthansa aircraft carry the new livery. These include a B747-8 and an A321.
None of the carrier’s fleet of A380s has been repainted so far.
A tweet today from @lufthansaNews shows a large model of an A380 bearing the new (original) livery and, to be honest, to my eyes it does not flatter the super jumbo. It looks severe. Therefore one can understand the management’s concern.
Lufthansa is both a thorough and conservative airline. One must wonder how such a simple mistake could have been made.
Let’s face it Northern Germany is renowned for its gloomy winters (one reason why Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen devised those funky colours) . Surely this factor would have been taken into consideration ?
Lufthansa has so far made no official announcement, but the news has appeared in Germany. See the below links for details (in German).
https://www.aerotelegraph.com/lufthansa-ueberarbeitet-neue-bemalung
http://www.aero.de/news-28652/Lufthansa-ist-neues-Markenblau-zu-dunkel.html
https://www.n-tv.de/der_tag/Lufthansa-ueberarbeitet-neues-Flugzeug-Design-article20309106.html
We await further details.
