Italian airline cabin branding specialist, ABC International, has completed a contract to create and deliver more than 100 heart-shaped branding panels for Southwest Airlines’ Boeing 737 fleet, reflecting the USA-based carrier’s corporate logo.
According to ABC International, its R&D team put a lot of effort into selecting the most suitable materials and technologies to create the most eye-catching panel design. They started with aluminium, but reported several issues in achieving the desired chrome surface.
The need to create a lightweight solution with a polished effect led the technical team to a polycarbonate option, which they say brought the desired effect.
Thus the SWA branding element is made of lightweight injected polycarbonate varnished with aeronautical paint, with a detailed focus on the distance between the blue, yellow and red stripes of the logo.
“Starting from SWA’s corporate colours, we manufactured several samples to match the iconic yellow, blue and red of SWA perfectly and, later on, to assess the grade of polishing effect on the chrome base of the heart,” explained Olindo Spatola, VP of engineering and programmes at ABC International.
“The challenging customer made the project harder than expected, considering the never-ending list of Southwest’s requirements”, added Spatola.” Perhaps, at the end of the day, it’s not important how difficult it was if the final result makes your customer satisfied.”
