page_title: American Airlines
section_title: Aircraft livery
hierarchical_section_title: American Airlines / Corporate affairs / Corporate identity / Aircraft livery
caption_attribution_description: US Airways "Carolina Panthers" Airbus Airbus A319-112 N717UW
context_page_description: American Airlines, Inc. is a major American airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the world's largest airline when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and revenue passenger mile. American, together with its regional partners, operates an extensive international and domestic network with almost 6,800 flights per day to nearly 350 destinations in more than 50 countries. American Airlines is a founding member of the Oneworld alliance, the third-largest airline alliance in the world. Regional service is operated by independent and subsidiary carriers under the brand name American Eagle.
  American Airlines and American Eagle operate out of 10 hubs, with Dallas/Fort Worth being its largest. The airline handles more than 200 million passengers annually with an average of more than 500,000 passengers daily. As of 2019, the company employs nearly 130,000 people.
  American Airlines operates its primary and the largest Maintenance and Repair Operations base in Tulsa in addition to the maintenance locations at its hubs.
context_section_description: American's early liveries varied widely, but a common livery was adopted in the 1930s, featuring an eagle painted on the fuselage. The eagle became a symbol of the company and inspired the name of American Eagle Airlines. Propeller aircraft featured an international orange lightning bolt running down the length of the fuselage, which was replaced by a simpler orange stripe with the introduction of jets."
  In the late 1960s, American commissioned designer Massimo Vignelli to develop a new livery. The original design called for a red, white, and blue stripe on the fuselage, and a simple "AA" logo, without an eagle, on the tail; instead, Vignelli created a highly stylized eagle, which remained the company's logo until January 16, 2013. In 1999, American painted a new Boeing 757 (N679AN) in its 1959 international orange livery. One Boeing 777 and one Boeing 757 were painted in standard livery with a pink ribbon on the sides and the tail, in support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. One Boeing 757 is painted with a yellow ribbon on the tailfin on the aircraft and the side of the body says "Flagship Freedom". American Eagle, the airline's regional airline has the same special livery on ERJ-145 aircraft.
  On January 17, 2013, American unveiled a new livery. Before then, American had been the only major U.S. airline to leave most of its aircraft surfaces unpainted. This was because C. R. Smith would not say he liked painted aircraft and refused to use any liveries that involved painting the entire plane. Robert "Bob" Crandall later justified the distinctive natural metal finish by noting that less paint reduced the aircraft's weight, thus saving on fuel costs.
  In January 2013, American launched a new rebranding and marketing campaign dubbed, "The New American". In addition to a new logo, American Airlines introduced a new livery for its fleet. The airline calls the new livery and branding "a clean and modern update". The current design features an abstract American flag on the tail, along with a silver-painted fuselage, as a throw-back to the old livery. The new design was painted by Leading Edge Aviation Services in California. Doug Parker, the incoming CEO indicated that the new livery could be short-lived, stating that "maybe we need to do something slightly different than that ... The only reason this is an issue now is because they just did it right in the middle, which kind of makes it confusing, so that gives us an opportunity, actually, to decide if we are going to do something different because we have so many airplanes to paint". The current logo and livery have had mixed criticism, with Design Shack editor Joshua Johnson writing that they 'boldly and proudly communicate the concepts of American pride and freedom wrapped into a shape that instantly makes you think about an airplane', and AskThePilot.com author Patrick Smith describing the logo as 'a linoleum knife poking through a shower curtain'. Later in January 2013, Bloomberg asked the designer of the 1968 American Airlines logo (Massimo Vignelli) on his opinion over the rebranding.
  In the end, American let their employees decide the new livery's fate. On an internal website for employees, American posted two options, one the new livery and one a modified version of the old livery. All of the American Airlines Group employees (including US Airways and other affiliates) were able to vote. American ultimately decided to keep the new look. Parker announced that American would keep a US Airways and America West heritage aircraft in the fleet, with plans to add a heritage TWA aircraft and a heritage American plane with the old livery. As of September 2019, American has heritage aircraft for Piedmont, PSA, America West, US Airways, Reno Air, TWA, and AirCal in their fleet. They also have two AA branded heritage 737-800 aircraft, an AstroJet N905NN, and the polished aluminum livery used from 1967 to 2013, N921NN.
caption: Airbus A319 of US Airways wearing Carolina Panthers livery
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