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runwayrunway · 11 months

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No. 15 - PSA (Pacific Southwest Airlines)

Thank you to @lobstersinmyhouse for requesting PSA! And, in all honesty, this is exactly my feelings too. Pack it up, post over.

...okay, no. I am going to write a post, but I make no secret of loving PSA's airplanes. After all, one is even my icon.

image: Piergiuliano Chesi

There was never an airline like it before PSA sprang up in 1949, and there has never been an airline like it since. Decades after its demise I still feel a real sense of grief about the fact that it's gone. Pacific Southwest Airlines hasn't existed for longer than its entire time in operation and it mostly only operated in a single state, but it remains one of the most beloved airlines ever to exist. I'm certainly far from immune to catching their smile. So I'm very, very excited to cover the iconic grinningbirds, one of the best-known airline liveries of all time even 40 years after the regional carrier which wore it ceased existing.

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PSA officially stands for Pacific Southwest Airlines. Unofficially, it was the Poor Sailor's Airline. According to a button they put out, it was this.

image: psa-history.org

But really, it can stand for anything you want. I think it stands for Pretty Smiling Airplanes.

You see, PSA's marketing leaned into the fun and casual as much as it was possible for an airline to do. They called themselves "The World's Friendliest Airline". Their branding was all bright, colorful, delightful. One aspect of it is particularly well known.

image: Piergiuliano Chesi

The name "grinningbird" is literal. PSA's fleet was lovingly painted with massive smiles directly under their noses. Their advertisements encouraged people to "catch our smile" across the state of California.

A preserved DC-3 in original Pacific Southwest livery

PSA was started as a single leased DC-3 hopping from San Diego to Oakland. Apparently their ticket office was literally a refitted military surplus latrine where they weighed passenger baggage on a bathroom scale. When they expanded with DC-4s they painted rectangles around the windows to make them look more like DC-6s. This was in 1955. And then, by the early 60s, they were taking off.

A pre-smile PSA Electra. The L-188 Electra is, of course, my favorite jet plane. image: Jon Proctor

It was in the 60s that their planes stopped saying 'Pacific Southwest Airlines' and started just being PSA, and it was in the 60s when they caught their smiles. This was the point when PSA became PSA, transforming from just another intrastate airline in the pre-deregulation era to a turning point in aviation history.

a 1972 promotional button image: psa-history.org

While the smiley faces are the most significant historical fact about PSA, also notable is the fact that they were the first low-cost carrier in history. Although PSA's routes were limited to Southern California, they charged $9.99 for a ticket other airlines would charge $13.50 or $22.05 for - and keep in mind that in today's money that's a difference of hundreds of dollars. Free of federal fare taxes and operating frequently, PSA grew at an intense pace with its new fleet of Lockheed L-188 Electras.

I love the L-188 Electra (not to be confused with the earlier L-10 Electra best known for Amelia Earhart reasons). Although Lockheed has long since moved over to exclusively making weapons for killing people, back when they were in the civil airliner market they made the most incredible planes which somehow ended up commercially flopping time after time. The Electra, for instance, was all but killed immediately by two early crashes caused by a sneaky design flaw. These were fixed, but the type's reputation had already been sullied. (Interestingly, similar early design flaws with far less prompt responses failed to kill either the DC-6 or the DC-10, despite the latter causing the deadliest crash in history at the time and the former having had the serious potential to give us a timeline where the President of the United States was killed because his presidential transport had a design flaw which encouraged going up in flames midair.) Ironically, the Electra is actually an insanely reliable and sturdy plane, and the example pictured is still in service as an air tanker under the registration C-GZCF, still doing her thing at just 63 years young. (Another Electra in Air Spray's fleet is a similar age but also survived being bisected across the belly by her own detached propeller, and she literally flew two days ago. These planes are on a level only shared with Nokia cell phones, especially for their size.)

That paragraph became about the Lockheed L-188 Electra. I did not mean for it to be, but I am leaving it in, because I love this plane. Looks great with the smile, too. The roundness of the nose gives the distinct appearance of something like a teddy bear snout.

From this point things only grew quicker. PSA continued to be PSA, acquiring more aircraft to fly more passengers. They did expand routes eventually, and once the 1978 Deregulation Act allowed they flew to some other states and even Mexico. Despite this, they remained an icon in their home state, and are often called "the unofficial flag carrier of California".

PSA stewardesses. I can't find an original source for either of these pictures, which have been widely spread without context or credit - although significant effort has been made to archive PSA's promotional content, a lot of it is, sadly, free-floating orphaned bits.

PSA's stewardesses wore bright pink and orange uniforms of miniskirts, hot pants, and go-go boots. They were encouraged to joke around with passengers, and so were the pilots. Other airlines at the time were still only slowly losing the unapproachable aura they had cultivated of stiff, sterile luxury and gravitas. PSA would get you where you needed to go without any fuss and they'd charge you half as much for it. And they weren't sloppy, either. Despite their low fares, PSA was incredibly safe, having one fatal accident in a span of time where American Airlines had 16, and even though nostalgia is obviously a factor I've only ever heard glowingly positive accounts of PSA, its service, and its staff.

image: Bill Larkins

PSA's fleet was...eclectic. Though they operated a few very popular models, like the Boeing 727 and McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series, a lot of their offerings were somewhat uncommon. The plane in my profile picture is one of their two L-1011 TriStars, another of Lockheed's underappreciated airliners and by far the most advanced wide-body aircraft of its time. PSA was unique in that it operated a jumbo jet, their "Mother Grinningbird", on a route that was not just domestic, but intrastate. They also apparently operated a single Bell 206 helicopter, which I can find no additional clarification on. Lastly, they flew one of the oddest airliners ever built in both function and appearance, the British Aerospace 146.

Just your regular high-wing jet. No thrust reversers necessary. Western-made but rocking the Il-76 wing anhedral. Super quiet because the powerplants are based off what you'd put on a helicopter. Seats less people than a 737-200 - six-across layout for maximum discomfort - and flies exclusively puddle jumps...yeah, I think four sounds like the right number of engines. image: Ted Quackenbush

Across all these planes, they found a livery that worked and they kept going with it. The reason this post is so long is to give context to just how important this livery is. The grinningbirds were what started low-cost carriers, paving the way for the silly names of jetBlue airplanes in a future its founders couldn't even have imagined. The shift to approachability over prestige in airline marketing was PSA's lasting gift to aviation, as were the low fares and the knowledge that a 'budget' airline didn't have to be dodgy or unpleasant - they just had to charge less than TWA and Western.

image: Piergiuliano Chesi

PSA's colorscheme was incredibly vibrant. The red and orange colors feel warm and tropical, complementing the California sunshine in which these planes spent their time. Earlier liveries also had a shocking hot pink shade above both, though it was eventually painted over due to issues with paint fading - I think the livery is vastly improved with its presence, but I suppose needs must. Despite the airline serving commuters more than vacationers it puts one in mind of things like beaches and ice cream stands - warm, high-energy things. The sorts of things one might smile about, if they like those things. I hate those things, but these planes make me like the idea of them, because they're just so darn happy to take me there!

The design of the fuselage is incredibly bold despite not using much more paint than any other airline of the day. While the striking colors definitely contribute to the overall look being more than the sum of its parts, I think there's also a few bits of clever design that really elevate the design of the plane.

The tail has a design almost like an inverse hockey-stick. Instead of following the cheatlines for maximum sleekness it chooses to diverge from it, creating a sharp angle that keeps the aerodynamic feeling while feeling fresh from similar designs of the time. By having the thin line from the tail trailing down towards the fuselage it prevents the block of empty space on a regular hockey-stick livery, where the forward portion of the empennage is fully unpainted, and creates a feeling of continuous color and excitement while keeping some staccato punch.

Similarly subtle yet effective are the stripes themselves. They aren't of an equal width - rather, the red stripe is thinner than the orange one, and in planes with the additional pink stripe this one is even wider. It feels a lot more dynamic than simple even-width stripes, feeling almost as if you can see the colors start to mix into each other. The 'mixing' feeling is helped by the fact that the cheatlines wrap under the nose instead of simply ending where they meet. The small painted white line under the main colored ones, above the unpainted metal of the underbelly, creates basically an extra two stripes for the price of one despite being so subtle many people probably didn't notice it.

On its own, the design of the bodies of PSA planes is already good, but it practically ceases to matter when you get to the face.

The way the top line of color wraps around the back of the cockpit windows makes it look almost like the plane is wearing sunglasses. And then there's the little painted black nose and, of course, the huge ear-to-ear grin. I don't really know what else to say about this because it's all been said time and time again.

I genuinely don't know how else to express it. PSA's livery was gorgeous and it was perfect for PSA. In all honesty, I don't think it's possible to improve it at all. My one slight criticism is that the actual PSA wordmark, though designed well, is a bit small and out of the way, but to be totally honest it's barely necessary. You see the smile and you know exactly who that plane is flying for.

PSA gets a PSA+.

So what happened to PSA, if they were so successful? Did an economic shift catch them off-guard? Did some demographic evolution rob them of their old customer-base? Did a change of management result in a new owner running the airline into the ground? Did it have anything to do with the fact that the one time they were involved in an accident it spent eight months as the deadliest crash in US history?

Nope. They got bought out by USAir because they wanted more routes on the West Coast.

Yeah. That's the story. Neither a bang nor a whimper. They left one morning and didn't come back. That was the end of PSA, the first-ever low-cost carrier, California's most beloved airline, and one of the best-designed liveries in airline history if not the very best.

There is, however, one final twist. USAir eventually was sucked into the gaping maw of American Airlines. With this merger American Airlines also inherited the rights to PSA's IP. In classic fashion, they created a wholly-owned subsidiary by the name of PSA Airlines, just to make sure nobody else could get the trademark.

Under the iron fist of first US Airways (USAir's eventual rebrand) and later American Airlines, we were allowed one last grinningbird - an Airbus A319-100 registered N742PS. It's strange, seeing the PSA livery on a model of airplane they never operated. It's a rare example of the design on airframes that have that rather distinct 'default' modern empennage, all sharp and tall with no t-tail or third engine. The implementation could take some notes and the colors look bizarrely plastic, but I will never stop loving her no matter how much they take from her. How could I not, with that smile?

Unfortunately, in April of this year she was re-painted to a standard American Airlines livery. Although the Allegheny and Piedmont heritage liveries were removed at the same time, I almost don't even notice their absence because of the loss of our very last holdout from a much more colorful time and place. Part of me feels a sort of ripping-the-bandaid-off relief at it. American Airlines shouldn't get to parade around the skin of a much better livery worn by a much better airline. That isn't theirs; they didn't earn it. And there's no way to rebuild PSA now that times have changed and the industry is unrecognizable from the days when a ticket from San Diego to Burbank cost $9.99. All the same, the loss of yet another smile hurts. There's no way it wouldn't. And at the end of the day it makes me feel a little dead inside just imagining the mindset of the American Airlines executive who walked by her in the hangar and instead of smiling back gave the order to paint her white. And that day, the sky got a little less colorful and a lot sadder.

Maybe, in a strange sense, the way it happened is better. Nobody ran PSA into the ground. They did not cause some sort of reputation-ruining accident through willful negligence. Their customer service did not decline until they were widely grumbled about. They didn't die infamous for poor safety and loose morals like Pan Am, or splitting at the seams and betraying their reputation like Chalk's Ocean Airways. No, I don't think an organic shriveled going-under would have held any more dignity than this. I think the ending PSA got is as graceful as the ending to something like PSA could be. There is no end to the glory days which forces itself into our memories. There is no decline. No sunset to fly off into. There is a loss to mourn, but no accompanying moment to curse. Lost at sea, ship never found, nothing to imply a terrible fate; all we know is the poor sailors aren't here anymore.

Maybe it's not universally known to people who aren't interested in subjects that bring them close to it, but to those of us who love planes PSA is truly special. Its quiet apotheosis has made it synonymous with the very best an airline could be. The joy of a time where a regular person could finally afford their first plane ticket and be greeted by colorful people who talk to them like friends, where even the planes are smiling, is encoded into the DNA of PSA's remnants, into every anecdote told by an aging former stewardess and into every Polaroid taken of one of those smiling planes parked on a sunny California tarmac. It was there, and then it was a distant echo of warm breezes and idle chatter that feels almost close enough to reach out and touch. PSA never died. One day it was flying passengers to their destinations, planes smiling their same smiles. The next day it was fond memory, already graduated to the distant sunny shores of nostalgia.

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#tarmac fashion week #grade: a+#region: north america #region: united states #era: 1960s #era: 1970s #era: 1980s #pacific southwest airlines #requests #defunct airlines #regional airlines #double sunrise #long haul #galley gala

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runwayrunway · 9 months

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No. 43 - Porter Airlines

I consider myself very lucky to live near enough to an airport, located directly beneath one of the main departure paths, that I can regularly see airplanes flying overhead on their way off to wherever. Depending on the plane, they can pass over my house as low as 3,000 feet! ...which is still way too high for my phone's camera! So while I can see the plane decently, even make out details of the livery, what my camera sees is...this.

Okay, so my planespotting hobby mostly consists of literally spotting them (I am very good at this part! It's the photography that I struggle with!) because I'm unable to shell out for a telephoto lens, but thanks to the magic of flight tracking software I'm able to identify the exact airplane that this is, rather than being forced to base my review off this crunchy "photograph".

So, I'd like to introduce you all to our subject for today, C-GLQR! And, by extension, Porter Airlines - requested by @fungaloids, plus an anon.

First flown in February of 2009 and delivered in December of the same year, C-GLQR has served her entire fourteen-year career with Porter Airlines. She's actually only slightly younger than the airline itself. Porter was founded in 2006, featuring executives who formerly served in similarly high positions in Canadian regional airlines Air Ontario and Canada 3000, American Airlines, and...apparently the former US ambassador to Canada for some reason. They're about as large as you can get while still more or less being a regional airline, and they fly a fleet I'd call medium-sized of Embraer E195-E2 jets and an even larger number of Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 turboprop planes, like the pictured C-GLQR, out of their hub in Toronto.

One interesting thing about Porter (inconsistently stylized as lowercase-p porter, but it lacks the clear intent of something like condor so I'm not going as far as to write it that way myself) is said hub. See, when I say Toronto, you probably think of the worst airport in the entire world, Toronto Lester B. Pearson International Airport. Thankfully for Porter's customers they do not have to go to the labyrinth of human misery which is Toronto Pearson, and are instead corralled into Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, colloquially known as Toronto Island Airport, potentially because it's changed its name twice and the local population got sick of remembering what it's calling itself now.

image: DXR

The 'island' designator is quite literal. This is a teeny tiny airport, just barely large enough to land the Q400 and definitely too small to land jets. The fact that Porter flies to Chicago-Midway, Washington-Dulles, and Boston-Logan is a testament to the Q400's absolutely wild range rather than an indication that this tiny scrap of land is in any meaningful way an international airport. It has two runways and both are shorter than the ones at the smallest airport I've ever flown into that had an actual terminal, Vieques. I'm surprised they can operate a Q400 there. In fact, they can't - they had to pick a seat configuration smaller than the standard in order to be able to use the runways at Billy Bishop. (Incidentally, this means their seats have a more generous pitch, so I suppose that's a point for them.)

So why would they want to put the biggest passenger turboprop in service in the West onto this tiny airstrip? Well, Porter's...reason for existing, so it seems, is to force the Toronto Port Authority to expand the airport and build a bridge to the mainland despite the fact that nobody who lives in the area wants this. Hilariously, they have been entirely unsuccessful in this venture and now operate a second hub in Pearson. That's where they put the jets - after all, if you tried to land an E195-E2 at Toronto Island you would have a very wet plane and some very mad passengers on your hands very quickly.

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I mean, to be fair, getting to not go to Pearson is a selling point.

I don't have any other place to put this but they have an adorable raccoon mascot named Mr. Porter. I'm not sure why a raccoon, but I like him. He doesn't appear on the livery at all - heaven forbid we do something interesting - but he's there and he's cute. I do have to point out, though, that this is one of the worst names for SEO I've seen in a while, given Mr. Porter is the name of the men's department of extremely popular luxury fashion outlet shop Net-a-Porter.

I think raccoons could be a pretty nice source of inspiration for a livery, what with their colorblocking and stripes. You could even make the planes' engine cowlings look like weirdly human little hands. I would hate that, but I would respect it! Instead Porter has taken the approach of making the plane mostly white. Revolutionary for sure.

I'll begin with the good and say that I really like this grey underside with its little outlines - I think this is an absolutely brilliant design for the Dash 8. Unlike the ATR series, which I've talked about a fair few times before on this blog, the Q400 is about as angular as a plane can get. I've never touched on that shape before, but I've discussed how carriers, though I'm sure it's by accident and they never consider this, work with the shape of the ATR to good effect. The curvaceousness of the ventral fairing on the ATR is complemented by long swoops like the ones used by Azul, IndiGo, and Air Astra. The Q400, in contrast, stores its landing gear in the engine cowlings, allowing for a very flat belly and uninterrupted fuselage that looks best with sharp long lines and blocky geometric shapes. If this livery had any other details, this would be such a nice touch - they even hammer the point in with the same design on the bottom of the cowlings.

Unfortunately, it's so light-colored that it's difficult to notice. You could mistake it for shadows settling on natural grooves in the airframe if you didn't know what the bottom of a Q400 is supposed to look like, and it isn't as if you can see it when the plane is parked.

You may well not see the wordmark, either. While the sans-serif font chosen is almost gratingly boring it is at least not hideous, but it's located in such an out-of-the-way location it almost feels like they're ashamed of it. It's so needlessly far back and low-sitting that the wing blocks it from half the possible angles, and it's not like it's accentuated in any way. You could so easily miss it. This wordmark is honestly Lufthansa-tier.

Another thing I don't like is the use of the tail. It's blocked out very Detached Tail Syndrome style, refusing to engage with the large block leading from it to the fuselage. I would understand, though not approve, if this was because they didn't want to redesign the balance of the tail when applying the livery to a new style of plane, but the Q400 is what they started with! The livery was designed for this plane and it seems to want you to just not notice this significant chunk of fuselage! It makes the whole airframe look so desolate and empty. The kindest thing I can say for it is that it looks lazy, but really it looks more unfinished. I just struggle to understand why these choices were made, in all honesty. Surely this isn't the best you can do.

Right, right, okay. There's something I've been dancing around on purpose and I think it's obvious what it is. I just wanted to get in an entire review first because there's sort of no going back once I've mentioned it. Everything I said before, while very important, is subordinate to this one...utterly perplexing choice which turns failure to infamy.

PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER PORTER

Grade: Z-

#tarmac fashion week #era: 2000s #era: 2010s #era: 2020s #grade: z-#region: north america #region: canada #regional airlines #porter airlines

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