British Airways ethnic liveries Under service with Qantas, the British Airways titles were removed and replaced with Qantas' own, but the remainder of the livery was left unchanged. Finally in May 2001 the new Chief Executive, Rod Eddington, announced the entire fleet would receive the new Union flag livery. Eddington argued that while an attempt to increase the airline's appeal was not a bad thing, the exercise hurt the image of the carrier among its core customers — those that are attracted by the British identity, which the ethnic tailfins diluted somewhat. British Airways ethnic liveries In 1997 British Airways (BA) adopted a new
British Airways ethnic liveries by covering one of the new tailfins on a model 747 with tissue paper. She declared, "We fly the British flag, not these awful things." Thatcher also indicated with these fins the airline would lose its identity. Virgin Atlantic took advantage of the controversy by applying a Union flag scheme to the front end of its aircraft. In their own 1999 relaunch, the flag was also applied to the vertical winglets of Virgin Atlantic's aircraft. While the majority of the designs were applied to a variety of aircraft models, one scheme (the stylised version of the Chatham Dockyard Union Flag)