The Hawaiian Airlines livery has gone through an interesting evolution over the years. Each new design has played off the best parts of the one it replaced, and they’ve all succeeded magnificently in capturing the spirt of Aloha. Here’s a closer look at some of their past liveries on a variety of different aircraft types:

The bare metal livery: 1995-2001

This version of the Hawaiian Airlines livery is one of my favorites. It’s very simple and highly iconic of the Hawaiian culture of the airline, and was very attractive for it’s time. Launched in 1995, it features an updated Pualani logo known as “the flower of the sky” (which was originally created by Landor Associates – the same branding agency that designed the Delta livery and the British Airways livery). Basically, it was a modern evolution of an existing brand.

Heck, I still think it’s one of the most attractive airline color schemes in the history of this business! What made this particular livery work so well was the fact that Hawaiian Airlines bought all their DC-10′s from American Airlines.

As we all know, the American Airlines livery has always been iconic, and it’s long-lasting (and smart-looking) polished bare-metal livery was able to live on (somewhat) thanks to Hawaiian Airlines. When HA acquired one of these birds from AA, all they had to do was remove the AA cheat line and tail logo and replace it with their own tropical version.

HA DC10 side view
The Hawaiian Airlines bare metal livery on my DC-10 template

Unfortunately, this livery didn’t stand up so well to the scorching sunlight over the years. Nearly all of those Hawaiian DC-10′s were fading pretty badly and looked downright rough by the time they started being phased out in the early 2000′s. But no worries. The illustration above depicts what a freshly-painted HA DC-10-30 would look like back in the mid 1990′s.

The little details of this livery that you might not have noticed:

  1. That cheatline must is rather complex because of the way it turns up at the tail of the aircraft. It took me a while to get that curve to look just right as it wrapped around the cylindrical fuselage for the illustration above.
  2. The colors are much more PINK than I thought they really were. I couldn’t believe it when I was mixing up the colors in Adobe Illustrator. My color palette looked completly wrong until I started applying the colors in the appropriate places on the aircraft. It was very deceiving.

The Hawaiian Airlines Floral livery: 2001-2017

With brand new Airbus A330’s entering the fleet in the early 2000’s it was necessary to move away from the bare metal livery. The skin of modern Airbus aircraft are made of composite materials, and there simply isn’t any metal to polish.

An all new Hawaiian Airlines livery was unveiled in 2001 to address that problem. It looked stunning, classy, and clean (much like the Sun Country livery of 2001). However, it wasn’t until I illustrated it on a variety of aircraft that I noticed a major issue with it. The 767 livery was different than the A330 livery!

Hawaiian Airlines A330 livery
Hawaiian Airlines colors look stunning on my Airbus A330-200 template

The tail art is nearly identical between aircraft, but there are some slight differences in the lower section of the fuselage. I’m not really sure why the designers chose to make this livery different between the 767 and A330, as I applied the same one to both (just to see what would happen) and I didn’t encounter any issues.

But being a designer myself, I know all about unforeseen problems and thus the necessary design inconsistencies between products that don’t really make much sense to everyone else. There’s a reason for everything I guess.

Anyway, Hawaiian Airlines had several variants of the 767 in their fleet. Some had beautiful winglets installed, while others did not. Here is an example of the 767 with winglets in this livery:

Hawaiian 767 with winglets
Hawaiian Airlines Floral livery on my Boeing 767-300 template (with winglets)

And here is what the same livery looked like on one of their 767-300s without winglets. As you can see, it’s not nearly as interesting:

hawaiian 767-300 without winglets
Hawaiian Airlines 767 Floral livery (without winglets)

The Hawaiian Airlines Floral livery looks great on both the A330 and 767. And (in my opinion), it looks absolutely stunning on the Boeing 717! The smaller size of this aircraft makes it easy to see the floral pattern in greater detail. Which is nice for a detailed livery such as this.

Hawaiian Airlines livery on 717
Pualani looks right at home on my Boeing 717-200 template

An all new Hawaiian airlines livery: 2017-present

After a successful 15-year run of the Floral livery, an all new Hawaiian Airlines livery was unveiled to the public in 2017. This new brand image is an evolution of the previous design (much how like every new Qantas livery has always been an evolution of the one that preceded it). A new Pualani logo with richer colors is the focal point, while a subtle maile lei graphic wraps the main part of the fuselage as a way to welcome guests.

new Hawaiian Airlines livery
The all new Hawaiian Airlines livery over top of my Airbus A321neo template

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5 Comments

    1. Nope, I didn’t create that art. And the reason why I chose that registration was because that was one of the Hawaiian 767’s I recently flew on. So yeah, it’s very cool that there’s a 1:150 scale model with that tail number – I might have to get it!

  1. You forgot about the other livery that Hawaiian used on the L-1011 Tristar! That on was my favorite. For example it’s on aircraft EI-BTN

    1. I’ve actually got of half finished illustration of that livery that I need to get wrapped up. I’ve also got a half finished video showing how I’ve how I illustrated the all new Hawaiian Airlines livery, so I’ll definitely get those posted as soon as I stop being lazy lol.

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