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
Freddie Mercury of people around the world". On 5 September 2016, the 70th anniversary of Mercury's birth, asteroid 17473 Freddiemercury was named after him. Issuing the certificate of designation to the "charismatic singer", Joel Parker of the Southwest Research Institute added: "Freddie Mercury sang, 'I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky' - and now that is even more true than ever before." The airline Norwegian painted the tail fin of two of its aircraft with a portrait of Mercury to mark what would have been his 71st birthday in September 2017. Mercury is one of the company's six "British tail fin