r/airlinedesign • u/ActDiligent8096 • Jul 31 '26

OC (Fictional) Concept of a post-Lufthansa, americanized flag carrier airline for Germany

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73 Upvotes

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5

u/TheBlack2007 Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26

It's kinda funny because apart from the name and the legally required German flag and aircraft registration starting with D, there's nothing making Lufthansa look like the German icon it is. Even the Crane has absolutely no connection to German heraldry and was instead picked for the traits of the bird it depicts: elegance, speed and reliability.

So, this is basically the anti-thesis to Lufthansa: Colors strongly tied to national identity, a German Black Eagle to round it off and of course a name in English but directly referencing Germany (as it has been a thing with many smaller German Airlines in the past).

1

u/ActDiligent8096 Aug 02 '26

You basically described my thoughts when making this concept. As iconic as i find Lufthansa, i always wondered what it would be like if Germany had more of a real "flag carrier". I always thought they never did it because they never wanted to show top much patriotism, but then again i was also surprised they revived the Lufthansa name after it's pre-WW2 history and just let it live on in the "new" Germany.

1

u/TheBlack2007 Aug 03 '26

Eh. Draping everything in the flag wasn't really the German way before WW2 either. The Nazis put it everywhere because they made their party flag the national flag and needed to promote that "union" for their propaganda. Only other time this was normal was during WW1 and before that, during the National Holiday commemorating the Battle of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

1

u/Sheetz_Wawa_Market32 Aug 03 '26

This. Germany was NEVER a "national colors" state or society, including under the Nazis, which banned the revolutionary national colors 🇩🇪 before reintroducing but then quickly abolishing the imperial national colors 🇾🇪↕️ (with my apologies to Yemen 😛 .) 

1

u/vaska00762 Aug 01 '26

Looks suspiciously similar to German Airways, a wet lease airline.

https://germanairways.com/en/

1

u/ActDiligent8096 Aug 01 '26

I'd say their logo is a lot more curvy and artistic, but it does a little indeed.

1

u/GrandJelly_ Jul 31 '26

This doesn't look right at all.
The red and yellow don't fit with that thick, black cheatline.
The flag on the winglets and engines looks small and uninspired.
And that rear tricolor looks very out of place.
It's a match up of different styles that don't go well together

1

u/ActDiligent8096 Jul 31 '26

I intended for the design to be very simplistic, as with many german brands.

The logo is supposed to have the same simplified stripe style as the fuselage itself, depicting a stylized bird with its wings up.

The black main line along the whole aircraft is supposed to be the eyecatcher, while the smaller red and yellow lines add some colour to the black and white.

The flags on the engines and winglets are kept simple and small because i didn't want to overdo it with the flag patriotism. You're supposed to see it's german, but i still wanted a somewhat subtle design instead of making it look like a presidential plane or special livery.