There are three airline alliances dominating commercial air travel: Star Alliance, oneworld, and SkyTeam. One interesting aspect of these groups is that all of their member airlines have aircraft that sport special alliance-wide liveries. These standard liveries promote the aircraft’s respective alliance wherever it travels – making it a “flying billboard” of sorts. So when exactly did this “become a thing”? And what exactly are the requirements of each member airline? In this article, we explore this topic and try to answer these questions.

It all started with the Star Alliance

Seeing as the Star Alliance began the whole concept of an airline alliance, it would be fitting that this firm also pioneered the alliance-wide standard livery. It was back on May 14th, 1997 that the Star Alliance was officially launched. This initially began with five carriers as founding members: Air Canada, Lufthansa, SAS, Thai Airways International and United Airlines. It was only five years later that an alliance-wide livery would be unveiled. Prior to this group having a standard appearance for an alliance livery, some member carriers sported special alliance-themed liveries to at least celebrate their newfound collaboration. A few notable liveries were found on Boeing 767s. In addition to the ANA livery found at the top of this article, there’s also this one operated by United Airlines:

And another was an SAS…