Icelandair Follows The Crowd With Its New Livery

Simple Flying

By Tom Boon

Published Jan 28, 2022

Icelandair has deployed the Boeing 737 MAX and Boeing 757 for its Tenerife flights. Photo: Icelandair

Icelandair has revealed its new aircraft livery to the world. The airline has taken a step away from its colorful northern lights Boeing 757 livery. Instead, the airline has taken a leaf out of Lufthansa's book. That is to say that its new livery is predominantly white, with a colored tail.

Over the past few years, we've seen a fair few airlines launching new liveries. From Lufthansa to Aer Lingus, quite a few fleets have seen a paint refresh, with many following an almost standardized livery, albeit with different logos and colors.

The new Icelandair colors

Icelandair has refreshed its livery for the first time since 2006. The new livery will gradually be applied to the fleet. While it will be primarily standardized across the airlines' planes, there will be some differences.

Icelandair, Livery, Boeing 757 — Photo: Vincenzo Pace - Simple Flying

Look at the "sky blue" stripe on the tail in the first image. Icelandair will use five different colors here, each representing a different part of Iceland. These colors are,

Boreal blue - The northern lights
Magenta - The creative power of Iceland
Sky blue - Iceland's summer skies
Yellow - The sun reflecting off of waterfalls
Green - Life even after the harshest of events

Additionally, the white and midnight blue that make up the bulk of the livery represents glaciers and the backdrop of the northern lights, respectively.

Icelandair hopes to have one of each color in the fleet by the end of next month, with five 737 MAX planes at the front of the queue. These repaints are taking place in Norwich, United Kingdom. While there is apparently a rush to get the first five liveries done, things will slow down slightly afterward. The airline won't update further liveries until an aircraft is taken out of service for maintenance.

Moving in a less creative direction?

While the inspiration for Icelandair's colors sounds incredibly creative, the overall design of the delivery looks like it was picked out of a catalog sent to European airlines. While the airline has different colors and logos to its competitors, the livery fits in with a growing trend of painting the fuselage white, extending the colors from the tail down the side of the jet, and placing the airline name on the side.

The livery is reasonably reminiscent of Lufthansa's livery. Photo: Lufthansa

While the old Icelandair livery was also a predominantly white aircraft, it did feature an exciting array of colors. The airline had two liveries that stood out against the rest, though. Rather than representing the northern lights with a stripe of color, one of the airline's Boeing 757 was decorated with the lights themselves. Another Boeing 757 wears the flag of Iceland. These aircraft are popular among spotters, and it would be a shame if the airline decided to scrap them.