Why are plane names so boring?
I just wrote a news item on my other site, ModernPilot.com, about a new jet’s first flight.
It’s called the D-JET. It made me think about different planes I flown: PA-28, DV-20, SR-20, SR-22, PC-12. Pretty boring names, don’t you think? Hardly capturing the thrill of flight.
Manufacturers sometimes give names to the numbers, so you get the Archer or Katana; but this is the exception to the two-letters and two-numbers rule.
Manufacturers’ names are a bit more exciting: Diamond, Eclipse, Gulfstream, Cirrus are reasonably interesting. Pilatus, after a mountain and Cessna, Piper, Adam and Lancair after founders.
Come on people, planes are exciting. Like the Eclipse advert says: “I own a jet, pretty cool huh!” Let’s have some better names.
Harris Salat wrote:
Perhaps follow the sublime example of the Japanese bullet trains. The “700 Series” is named “Hope” (Nozomi). Other bullet trains are called “Light” (Hikari) and “Echo” (Kodama).
Posted on 21-Apr-06 at 2:29 pm | Permalink
k wrote:
i agree those names are boring, but could it be that the manufacturer want the excitement attached to the corporate name rather than the individual product line?
you could make an argument that a cool name would detract for the brand equity of the corporate ID and make it harder to transfer that cachet to product lines to come later.
Posted on 22-Apr-06 at 4:26 am | Permalink
Matthew Stibbe wrote:
Possibly. But does iPod detract from the brand equity of Apple or enhance it?
Posted on 22-Apr-06 at 6:30 am | Permalink
Bad Language / Stupid product names III wrote:
[...] Why are plane names so boring? [...]
Posted on 24-Nov-06 at 1:02 pm | Permalink
Stilgherrian wrote:
My guess: We don’t want aircraft designs to be “exciting”, we want them to be “reliably engineered”.
A name like “PA-28” tells me that it’s from a long line of designs, and that someone is carefully numbering them along the way. A name like “Zoommaster ZLX” tells me that someone’s going for the latest trend.
iPod might be a cool name — but I’m not placing my life in its hands at 20,000 feet!
Posted on 03-Dec-06 at 5:37 am | Permalink