London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

The Advent of Virgin Australia

Virgin Atlantic Airways has always inexplicably attempted a fine balance between the crisply modern and the vaguely old-school. It is also unashamedly British. When the lumbering giants at British Airways were busy banishing the Union Jack from their aircraft livery — prompting Baroness Thatcher to cover the model of a BA 747 with a handkerchief — Sir Richard Branson said “We’re British: why don’t we fly the flag?” The Union Jack was added to every Virgin Atlantic plane and a flag design was later added to the wingtips. Virgin Atlantic now has a patriotic red-head (above) bedecked in the Union flag on the nose of each of its aircraft glamourously advertising their national origins in this hyperglobalist age.

Virgin Group has not restrained itself from expanding beyond the trans-Atlantic flightpath. In 2000, they established Virgin Blue in Australia, originally flying only between Brisbane and Sydney, but gradually expanding within the country, especially after the 2001 collapse of the major domestic carrier Ansett Australia. In 2003, Virgin started Pacific Blue Airways out of New Zealand, operating trans-Tasman routes, followed by the founding of Polynesian Blue in 2005 running flights between New Zealand, Australia, and Samoa. Finally, V Australia was started operations in 2009 running long-haul flights out of Australia.

This multiplicity of brands and operations was a bit unfashionable in this age of ‘synergy’, so this May it was announced that all these entities would be folded into a single carrier to be known as Virgin Australia. (I don’t know why they didn’t choose the somewhat more complementary name of ‘Virgin Pacific’).

I’m happy to discover (via Brand New) that Virgin Australia will carry on the patriotic tradition of its British stablemate with its own flag-bearing virgin.

I am a big fan of the Australian flag and I’m glad to see that, like Australia’s monarchy, efforts to abolish or replace it have largely come to naught. The Australian National Flag Association leads the charge in defending and promoting the dominion-continent’s most emblematic symbol, while AusFlag promotes debate with the aim of adopting a newer flag with less historical resonance. AusFlag basically maintains an anything-but-the-Union-Jack position, implying that the Union Jack is un-Australian. (If they’re right, then perhaps the Westminster system of government and the inheritance of centuries of tradition of parliamentary democracy are un-Australian as well).

Virgin Australia’s patriotic maiden will, however, be rendered in a more subtle monochrome, rather than the red-white-and-blue of Virgin Atlantic.

Published at 2:50 pm on Sunday 12 June 2011. Categories: Australia Design Errant Thoughts Tags: , , .
Comments

Were he to venture into Scandinavia, would we have the option of flying Norwegian Blue?

— rhetoric57 12 Jun 2011 3:43 pm

I love the design.

— valeria kondratiev 13 Jul 2011 5:15 pm

As an Australian I enjoyed your comments about the Australian flag and AusFlag, coupled together with references about Australia ditching the Monarchy.
Most Australians do not see a link between whether we are a republic and the flag. There are Republicans such as myself who call for an Australian head of State, but see no reason why the flag needs to change. Hawaii still bears the Union Jack on it’s state flag. Food for thought.
As for Virgin Australia, I love our take on the Flying Maiden. She’s artful, classic and yet still contemporary. And like you I’ll never understand why the entity wasn’t called Virgin Pacific!

— David Palmer 7 May 2018 11:06 pm

Oh no! There is a mistake on the Australian Maiden’s flag. The smallest star should have 5 points, not 7 like the others.

— JD 1 Jun 2018 6:43 am
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