Advertising liveries: when aircraft fly for brands, regions and cities

For advertisers, an aircraft is a rewarding medium: big, eye-catching, constantly on the move and in front of thousands of people at every airport. No wonder, then, that airlines keep renting out their fuselages to brands, tourism boards and cities. Advertising liveries are among the shortest-lived and, precisely for that reason, most sought-after designs for spotters. This article sorts out the different forms, presents well-known examples – from the orca jet in Texas to the gold bear bomber from Hanover – and shows you how to get advertising jets in front of your lens on purpose.

Advertising liveries: the short answer

An advertising livery is a paint scheme with which an aircraft advertises for a partner – a product, a destination, a city, a cultural event or even an airport. In English people often speak of a logojet. Unlike retro or anniversary designs, the airline itself is not the focus, but the message of a third party. The airline logo often remains only on the tail, on the engines or as titles.

Within the large family of special liveries, advertising liveries are a category of their own with one typical trait: they depend on contracts. When the partnership ends, the design disappears – sometimes after a few months, rarely after more than a few years.

The three forms of aircraft advertising

Not every advertising livery advertises a product from the supermarket. In practice you can distinguish three large groups that blend into one another.

Form	What is advertised	Typical partners	Typical duration
Brand advertising	Products, services, films	Confectionery, automotive, media and telecommunications companies	Months to a few years
Tourism advertising	Countries, states, vacation regions	Tourism boards, regions, hotel chains	One to several years
City and location advertising	Metropolises, cultural institutions, airports	Cities, festivals, airport operators	One to several years
Group and partner advertising	Sister brands, partner companies	Hotel or travel brands within the same group	Often longer, since it is internal

There are also special cases such as sports and club designs, which have a history of their own – more on that in the article on football and sports special liveries. Film and character designs such as ANA’s Pokémon jets are covered by the post on comic and movie liveries.

Brand advertising: from the logojet to the gold bear

Western Pacific: a whole airline as ad space

The most consistent implementation came from the US carrier Western Pacific Airlines. The low-cost carrier from Colorado Springs started flight operations in April 1995 and painted most of its Boeing 737s as so-called logojets – with advertising for other companies and destinations. The fuselages advertised, among others, casinos in Las Vegas, ski resorts in Colorado, a car rental company and a hotel resort. The most famous design came about in 1995 together with the TV network Fox: an aircraft in the look of The Simpsons. The business model did not save the airline – in February 1998 Western Pacific ceased operations. Since then the logojets have been a chapter of aviation history.

Southwest Airlines: orcas over Texas

One of the longest-lived advertising designs of all also comes from the USA. From 1988, Southwest Airlines painted Boeing 737s in the look of an orca for the SeaWorld theme parks. In total, five aircraft carried the black-and-white design under names such as “Shamu One.” In 2014 the two companies ended the partnership, and the last orca jets were retired or repainted in the following years. Over the years Southwest flew many more partner designs, for example for the basketball league NBA, for Disney films or for the TV channel Discovery Channel. You can find more on the airline in the profile of Southwest Airlines.

TUIfly: gold bears, trains and photo books

In Germany, the leisure airline TUIfly was the address for advertising jets for years. According to the airline’s fleet overviews, it flew, among others:

• Haribo: The Boeing 737-800 D-AHFM advertised for the confectionery maker from late 2008 to 2013, D-ATUD flew from 2010 to 2016 as “HaribAIR” with a gold bear design, and D-ATUJ from 2015 to 2018 as a colorful “bird of paradise” for another Haribo product.
• Deutsche Bahn: From 2011 to 2014, two 737-800s were in service as “DB Air One” and “DB Air Two” – one aircraft in ICE design, one in the look of regional transport.
• CEWE photo book: The photo service provider was a partner across several aircraft and years, most recently until 2025 on D-ABMV.
• Other brands: A car manufacturer also advertised a van model in 2010 and 2011, and a milk brand from 2012 to 2013.

The list shows a typical pattern: the running times were mostly between one and six years, and individual aircraft changed their advertising design several times over their lives. For collectors that means a registration can look completely different at different times. Background on the airline is provided by the profile of TUIfly.

Even Concorde advertised

How far airlines go for advertising partners is shown by an outlier: in April 1996 the Air France Concorde F-BTSD briefly wore a paint scheme in the colors of a beverage maker. That was remarkable, because the supersonic jet was normally painted almost entirely in highly reflective white to limit the heating of the aluminum structure in supersonic flight. The stunt was correspondingly short. You can read more about the supersonic jet in the history of Concorde and in the type portrait of the Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde.

Tourism advertising: destinations to fly along

For countries and vacation regions, a painted aircraft is an especially fitting ad space: it lands exactly where potential vacationers board. Typical examples:

• Carinthia at TUIfly: A 737-800 advertised the Austrian state from early 2009 to early 2010.
• Air Berlin: Among other things, the airline flew a design titled “Discover America” in 2014 and 2015 and one under the motto “#seeaustralia” from 2016 to 2017 – destination advertising for long-haul destinations on short- and medium-haul jets.
• Southwest state flags: Since 1990 (“Lone Star One” for Texas), Southwest has painted individual 737s in the flags of US states the airline serves – including Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada and Colorado. It is a mix of regional and self-promotion.
• AeroSur: In 2011 the Bolivian airline promoted its new route to Madrid with a Boeing 747 in a bullfighting design called “Super Torísimo.”

A gray area is formed by designs with which airlines show the landscape of their home country. Icelandair, for example, flew a Boeing 757-200 with a northern lights design called “Hekla Aurora” and another 757 with a glacier design called “Vatnajökull.” Both looked like tourism advertising for Iceland, but were the airline’s own creations. Both aircraft are no longer in scheduled service.

City, culture and location advertising

Especially in Germany, cities, states and cultural institutions have used aircraft as ambassadors.

Germanwings (2002–2020) flew several Airbus jets with regional designs. On Airbus A319s, among others, a “Hamburg Shopper” advertised for the Hanseatic city around Hamburg Airport, a “Berlin Bearbus” for the capital, a design for the city of Cologne and one with the slogan “Mhhhh, Baden-Württemberg” for the state. An Airbus A320 was in service as “Spirit of Cologne” – a greeting to the home base at Cologne Bonn Airport. Germanwings also flew brand designs for a telecommunications group and children’s characters such as Maya the Bee. The airline’s history is in the profile of Germanwings.

TUIfly bet on culture: from 2007, two Boeing 737-300s advertised for the Bach Archive in Leipzig and for the Handel Festival in Halle – fitting the region around Leipzig/Halle Airport. From 2015 to 2017, a 737-800 also carried advertising for Albrecht Dürer Airport, that is, Nuremberg Airport.

Air Berlin, finally, advertised from 2015 to 2017 with an Airbus A321 titled “AirDüsseldorf” for its hub at Düsseldorf Airport. With the insolvency and the end of flight operations in 2017, all of the airline’s designs ended – more on that in the profile of Air Berlin.

Group advertising: when the partner brand is part of the family

A special variant is designs for brands from the airline’s own group. In recent years TUIfly flew, among others, designs for hotel and club brands of the TUI Group and for a Spanish hotel chain the group works with. Such liveries are often longer-lived than classic third-party advertising because no external contract runs out. Whether a particular design is still flying as of October 2026, you should check for the latest before a trip – fleet changes and repaints can end it at any time. An overview of the group’s airlines is provided by the page on the TUI airlines.

Paint, film and the registration

Technically, advertising designs are usually implemented as a combination of paint and stickers. Large areas of color are created in the paint shop, while complex logos, titles and photo designs are often added as film. That saves time and makes removal at the end of the contract easier. How the two methods differ is explained by the post Film or paint; what a paint job costs and weighs is in the article on cost and weight of an aircraft paint job.

There is one limit to every design: the registration must remain clearly visible. Advertising designs are therefore laid out around the registration. That is practical for you, because even on the most colorful advertising jet you can usually read the marking easily. How registrations are structured is shown in the guide Understanding aircraft registrations.

How to catch an advertising livery

Advertising jets are fleeting. To turn “I would have liked to” into a photo, a clear routine helps.

How to find a particular aircraft by registration or hex code is described in the guide Tracking an aircraft by registration. The detailed method for all special paint schemes is in Finding special liveries.

Photographing advertising jets: what matters

• Show the whole surface: Advertising designs live from the side view. Side-on taxiing shots or flat approaches usually show the design better than steep perspectives from below.
• Check both sides: Titles often run differently on the left and right sides, and some designs are asymmetric. A second photo from the opposite direction is worthwhile.
• Watch the details: Besides the main design, many advertising jets carry small logos on engines, winglets or the nose. Close-ups of these are valuable for documentation.
• Capture the first and last flight: Presentations of new advertising jets and last flights before the repaint are small events – and exactly the pictures that are looked for later.
• Respect third-party brands: When you publish your photos, you show third parties’ brands and logos. For private collections and community posts that is customary; for commercial use other rules apply.

Documenting and collecting advertising jets

Because advertising liveries disappear again so quickly, every sighting is a small historical document. For each photo, note the registration, aircraft type, airline, airport, date and the name of the design. Over the years this builds a collection that shows how advertising in the sky has changed – from the logojets of the 1990s to today’s group designs. Tips for building such a collection are in the post Collecting and documenting special liveries.

Conclusion

Advertising liveries turn aircraft into flying billboards – for sweets and train travel, for vacation regions and US states, for big cities, festivals and airports. The big examples range from Western Pacific’s logojets to Southwest’s SeaWorld orcas to TUIfly’s gold bears and Bahn jets. What they have in common is a short lifespan: when the contract ends, the design usually ends too. If you want to collect advertising jets, you therefore work with the registration, watch operating patterns and document every sighting carefully.