Who's That? Part 16 - Rogue's Gallery revealed

As promised, this was a hodge-podge of special liveries and generics, along with whatever else I found laying around. When I was in New Orleans, they would call this "sweep the kitchen" or maybe even "sweep the swamp". For my simplicity, the carriers with multiple entries are grouped together.

Horizon

Boise State Broncos
(love those colors!)

University of Oregon Ducks
(Although it sure looks like John Deere to me)

University of Washington Huskies

Bonus: Horizon also has a Dash 8 in Huskies colors.

US Airways

State of Arizona

State of Nevada

Arizona Cardinals

Philadelphia Eagles

Star Alliance

This was tricky because it isn't an airline, but rather an airline marketing alliance. I think I've mentioned the Star Alliance before; it was the world's first airline alliance, and I believe it is the largest of the three major airline alliances. There are about two dozen member airlines. An airline's membership in the Star Alliance is usually denoted by the star logo appearing on the aircraft, just aft of the cockpit windows. But there is also this Star Alliance livery which appears on a few aircraft, in this case another US Airways A319. As a controller, I don't care for it because it's very difficult to distinguish what airline the plane actually flies for: The operating airline's name/logo appears in relatively small print below the windows aft of the front door. This makes it difficult for the controllers and other pilots to figure out who the airplane is, especially at night. I've personally had situations where I've told another aircraft to follow or pass behind a United or US Air (among others) aircraft who unbeknown to me was in the Star Alliance livery, only to have the pilot not do what I instructed him to do because I had incorrectly described the airplane he was waiting for. Here are a few more Star Alliance-schemed aircraft:

You can see the Star Alliance logo on this Air Canada E190, between the cockpit window and front cabin door.

All Nippon B773

United B744

United B763

Unlike most other airlines, Singapore's Star Alliance livery retains the airline's logo on the tail, which makes identifying the airline much easier. I wish they were all this way.

SkyTeam

Not to be outdone, the second-largest airline alliance, SkyTeam, has introduced its own special livery in commemoration of its tenth anniversary. Like Star Alliance, SkyTeam's member aircraft display the SkyTeam logo just aft of the cockpit, and the special-liveried aircraft have the parent airline's name/logo aft of the front door, below the window line. The tail I showed you was an Air France B773; here are couple more:

Delta (nee Northwest) B752

China Southern B772

This Northwest Airbus shows the usual placement of the SkyTeam logo on participating airlines' aircraft: Just aft of the cockpit window.

Evergreen

Okay, there really wasn't anything tricky about this one, I just recently started seeing them here again and got some pictures. Evergreen International is a cargo operator based in Oregon. We used to get Evergreen DC9's in the wee hours, but not for some time now.

Air Shuttle

Air Shuttle is the callsign for Mesa Airlines, who appears at LAX as a regional partner for US Airways. They fly mostly to/from Las Vegas and Phoenix using various models of CRJ like this CRJ2. Here's how they normally appear:

Alaska

To commemorate 50 years of Alaska's statehood, Alaska Airlines held a contest for a special paint scheme to appear on a B734: The Spirit of Alaska Statehood was designed by a student from Sitka, Alaska. The design is different on each side of the aircraft, and I like the way the sled dog appears to be wearing shades:

Mexicana

The Vive Mexico campaign was launched earlier this year by Mexican President Calderon to reinvigorate the Mexican tourism industry.

I've been seeing this white-tailed Mexicana A320 for months now; apparently they've run out of logo decals. Interestingly, this airplane and the one with the Vive Mexico livery both carry French registrations - if you look closely, you can see that they're consecutive.

Omega

This was another sneaky one, as it isn't a regular airline. I knew that the armed services have been contracting out non-essential services (anybody remember Halliburton?), but until these guys showed up, I had no idea that the practice had extended to mid-air refueling service. Omega Air offers this specialized capability, which seems like really targeted marketing. As far as I know, the only users of mid-air refueling are the military forces around the world; a mid-flight top up is not available to the flying public at large. This is a B707 - an old and rarely-seen aircraft these days. Compare to the B747 that's tail-on to the camera.

Sun Country

Of all the sneaky shots, this one was the most underhanded: The tail of this B737 wears Aloha colors, but the fuselage carries the Sun Country name. Adding to the underhandedness is the fact that I actually took this shot a couple of years ago. This is how the plane (well, one of its fleet-mates actually) looks now: