New Airline Alliance: Flock?

You’ve got to give it to the Asia-Pacific market for best branding, naming and uniform design. Recently I had the pleasure…hmmm…I had the opportunity?? Let’s just say I had some really bizarre flights recently.

Tiger Air flight crew wears black and yellow and yes, the female flight crew wears tiger printed scarf’s as belts. One of the male members of the flight crew had a tiger tail. I kid you not. The planes do have tigers and tiger stripes painted on them. The inside of the plane was cramped. The seats made Spirit Airlines look luxurious. They packed the people in.

Firefly, not to be confused with the Sweet Tea Vodka from South Carolina called Firefly (oh, I see a great partnership brewing here.) Their outfits are bright orange, the planes are orange, there’s a lot of orange. I really didn’t like the scarves the crew wears. Luckily for them they don’t have to wear the scarves as wings!  You’ll see a lot of Firefly in Langkawi, Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur (if you’re looking.)

And then there is Lion Air – we’ve heard about them in the news lately for their recent crash. I actually saw one of their planes parked right in between Air Asia and Tiger in KL. Who do you think wins in that fight? I would guess Tiger?

Now, the one that continually puzzles me is Nok Air – a low fare Thai carrier. The logo, a bird, looks like a fortune cookie (but that’s not really Thai).  Their planes are painted like tropical birds.  I just can’t get past the fortune cookie similarity.  They do offer really good fares in Thailand.

And do the poor Nok crew really have to wear big bird yellow? Why not dress them like a parrot?

If you’ve been to Indonesia, or the surrounding countries you’ve probably seen these planes. While not a true low cost carrier, they’re much more reasonable than most. So I’m calling them semi-low carrier. Their logo is a bird and they’ve got planes that have some great paint jobs.  This one pictured is their standard paint job, but they have many that are green with the body painted like a bird. 

Air Niugini, my favorite to pronounce, is the airline of Papua New Guinea. The only time I’ve ever seen them is in Fiji. But they proudly display the bird on their body.

Now, I had to go searching the web for a picture of the crew, so here’s a picture from their own website.  Those uniforms aren’t so inspiring…

Well, you know what they say…birds of a feather – so I vote for a new alliance called Flock with Nok and Firefly (it’s kind of like a bird), Air Niugini, and Garuda Indonesia.  Maybe we could even start a second alliance called Safari Alliance with Tiger and Lion, oh my!

Now, I still haven’t figured out what to do with plain old Air Asia. Perhaps they are taken over by Lion and we’ll let Simba figure out who keeps control after the merger. They also must change their name from Air Asia to one of the other big 5 predators in jungle – something like leopard, elephant, buffalo or rhino. Hmmm…I can see the uniforms now. Elephant Tusks to keep unruly passengers in line? Sounds good to me.