Following the horrifying fire that nearly killed the passengers on one of its jets the other day, China Airlines has erased the logo on the wreckage of their plane with white paint:
After the press started asking questions about the paint job, their spokesperson responded with the following:
“We followed international procedures. We do not have detailed information.”
As this video of the fire shows, they obviously forgot about following far more important maintenance procedures that prevent every other international airline seems to be able to follow:
Commenter Bob has pointed out that this latest logo cover-up paint job is a lot better than one of China Airlines’ previous post-accident PR clean-ups:
If you’re interested in China Airlines’ safety record, check out this article in the Asia Sentinel [via Coming Anarchy].
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“We followed international procedures. We do not have detailed information.” Wasn’t this a passage from the political playbook entitled ‘When Caught Red Handed’?
In fairness, I’ve seen plenty of airlines across the world do this. Even to the extent of draping a canvas over the tail to hide the logo.
Looks like they’ve done a better paint job this time.
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0160801/L/
It’s common practice. Here is an image from a crash in Sweden.
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0407278/L/
Marketing is important. One important aspect of marketing is managing perceptions of a brand/product; promoting the positive AND mitigating the negative.
Attack China Airlines for any legitimate reason you can find, but not for taking straightforward action to limit the future business impact of this disaster. Or perhaps you’d prefer it if a bunch of China Airlines employees lost their jobs as a result of a downturn in business as a result of this accident?
“The Okinawa fire is a setback to China Airlines, which in recent years appeared to have improved on a troubled safety record among international carriers.”
Accidents happen, folks…
No, perhaps I’d prefer that companies not lie to save their butts and to try to hide information that we need to know to make intelligent decisions. If a bunch of incompetents lose their jobs because they’re unable to provide safe air travel, yes, that is completely fine with me.
I work in the aviation industry. Covering up the name and registration number of an aircraft after an accident (especially a high-profile one) is fairly standard practice in the industry. The reason for doing it is obvious, but it’s not scandalous.
If you enjoy reading accident reports then you’ll love the NTSB website where all reports are public and searchable.
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp
For example, the Flight 800 explosion was on 7/17/1996.
I believe whenever an accident like this happens and there is still wreckage to paint over – the insurance companies take ‘ownership’ of the aircraft. Thus the airline does ‘damage control’ pardon the pun, by painting over the aircraft beacause it no longer belongs to them and to lessen the visibility of the brand to the rest of the world.
The same thing has happened after many crashes around the world after an airline accident. It’s called damage control for a reason…and you can blame the insurance companies for it.
so what do they suppose they’ll get out of this paint job ?
Their planes probably contain deadly amounts of lead. They will be recalled shortly.
you do know that china airlines is a taiwanese airline…
It’s definitely to do with the insurance company – once a claim has been filed for something that has been written-off it ceases to be owned by the “user + is treated a scrap. Hence the logo gets wiped – this makes the marketing dept happy too of course
This is sort of standart procedure in aviation!
Nothing special about it… just marketing
our planes do not crashes!
it all a hoax !
its not true its a hoax.
it was not our plane…
You’d think China Airlines would be experts at the painting over thing, given how many planes they’ve lost. Mind you, there’s not usually much to paint over…
It is interesting though that very few people in America have any knowledge of or interest in China Airlines’ awesome safety record. Is that because they think the airline is actually from China? And is therefore, er, um, “safe”?
It is interesting to note that there is no lack of people willing to fly CAL, and ex-Taiwan they are by no means cheap. Perhaps all this safety nonsense is overblown?
If you breath too much or too fast you will die of er whats that thing called DAMN! Swiming in the beach may get you drowned, pool too. Flying in a airplane… well life can always go wrong, you just don’t know when. I mean there could be a gas leak happening in your house right now as you read this comment. The only reason you may take this post seriously is probaley because you fly allot or have never taken into consideration that life is just dangerous, and anything can happen right now. Life IMO
Think I can talk my insurance company into removing my license plates and vin# when I wreck my car next time? And maybe do it within 15 minutes of the wrack occurring?
I don’t want the cops coming to ask a bunch of questions and getting the wrong idea about my ability to pilot a terrestrially-bound craft…
This actually happened while I was in the air flying to Taiwan on another CA jet.
To whom this may concern: This is a standard industry practice. In the case of American Airlines and it’s code-sharing carriers, all post-incident staff are instructed to carryout such a procedure as soon as possible.
RTW
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awa