ecently, India's civil aviation minister, Praful Patel, announced a new name for the government-owned domestic carrier, Indian Airlines. As the campaign was unleashed, Indian Airlines became Indian with a spanking new logo, inspired by the Sun Temple in Konark, Orissa.
Just why did the carrier change its name? According to Indian officials, shortening of names is nothing new to the aviation industry. There is precedent, points out the spokesman for the airline. Austrian Airlines switched to Austrian, Swissair became Swiss (a new airline that came up because losses forced Swissair to close down in 2001) and British Airways (BA), for a brief while decided to drop the word Airways way back in 1982, though it reverted to the old name. BA went in for a change just to stand out from a crowd of UK-based airlines whose names invariably started with the word, British (for example, British Caledonian, British Island, British Midland). The name change, didn't do much for the airline in the way of more custom, and went back to being British Airways.
The Indian Airlines name change had a different thought behind it. "We wanted to change the typical image of the airline and contemporise the entire approach towards the passengers, more so the younger generation," says the spokesperson. According to Ajit Shah, executive director, R K Swamy BBDO, "a lot has changed in the aviation industry in India. We wanted a modern and contemporary look to its image and it was fairly redundant having Indian Airlines. We went ahead with this after a study was done among corporate houses, designers and customers." ... more