Speaking of logos, the photo above was taken at some kind of promotional event held in the early 1980s. (Delta didn’t conditionally check garment bags.) Each day, it was someone’s duty to “build” a supply of boxes for the shift’s flights, and it wasn’t unusual to see these boxes in the bins of different airlines because passengers would either save their bags for future trips, pick up discarded boxes in the claim area, or ask for a box, even when they were flying another airline. When I worked at Delta, the boxes were hugely popular, and we were told the cost of the box outweighed the cost of damage claims to garment bags. Also of note is the Customer with the Delta garment bag box. Since Beaumont service was so short-lived, it’s not surprising that more folks don’t know about the logo. The big difference is that the script was in black on the aircraft, and it is white behind the counter.
As far as I can tell, this is the only Southwest airport that used a variation of the logo carried on N406BN. Southwest flew to Beaumont in southeast Texas between March 5, 1979, and September 5, 1980. The answer might be that it was a small facility so the gate and ticket counter could have been combined. This looks like a gate because of the microphone to make boarding announcements, but it’s confusing because there appears to be a bag belt behind the counter. I don’t know if he played a role in the logo, and our advertising agency at the time, the Bloom Agency, has been out of business for a long time now, so we can’t ask them.Įven rarer is the photo above of what I am pretty sure is our Beaumont operation. The timing of the logo is interesting because it happened during the time that Howard Putnam was Southwest’s CEO. As proof this “one-off” livery was an experiment, we took delivery of seven 737-200s during the same general time period with the standard block white letters on the tail. The airplane carries a script “S” with the same shadowing used in the fuselage title. The uniqueness of N406BN’s livery extends to the vertical stabilizer. Besides being unique as a Southwest 727 (we would later lease six 727s from PeoplExress in 1983 with a more standard livery), it is the only aircraft to wear this stylized logo. It flew between Dallas and Houston for about ten months, even though the lease was supposed to have lasted two years.
It is N406BN, and it is the 727-200 that Braniff provided to us on lease in 1979 as settlement of legal action we had brought against them. Yup, that’s a Southwest aircraft in the photo above. In this week’s post, we look at an unusual logo or two, a unique boarding pass, and a face-to-face baggage delivery system. Looking back at the 41+ years Southwest Airlines has been in business, it’s not surprising to find some historical oddities in our files. The biggest reason, though, is that I am continually amazed at how many unexpected treasures Brian managed to find to share with us each week and how much richer we are for those efforts. Surprisingly, there were a few, and the one that I was given has the number 95 on it-not a great boarding position, for sure-but it is the year I started here at Southwest. As a former Braniff Flight Attendant, I flew on the 727-200 featured in the first photo more times than I can count (but not with this very unique Southwest livery).Īnd, as a California native, I always loved the “Golden State”-shaped boarding passes that were used “back in the day.” Long after those plastic cards were retired, I asked a friend in Marketing if there were any that might be still be around. I selected this particular Flashback installment to be a “Best of” for a number of reasons.
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