Dear Condor Marketing & PR Department,

what were you thinking?

After it officially leaked out at the end of last week that something bigger was about to happen at Condor, everything suddenly happened in quick succession. A few days before an interview with Condor boss Teckentrup, I had gathered from the Funk hallway that Condor was daring to do something “new – in the direction of Icelandair” – ergo – different colors – with the same concept. It should be made official this Monday at 10:00 am.

Apparently there was a lot of fear at headquarters east of Rhein-Main Airport that something would leak out in advance. A PR employee registered in the late evening hours of last Sunday in a large German aviation forum in order to once again expressly condemn his own employees to secrecy. Well and clearly legible for everyone and not an hour later, also deleted again.

What a Sunday night spectacle, good thing I had some salted popcorn by my side to watch. Now I have to honestly say that I have a lot in common with Condor, many beautiful moments. Condor is vacation, in my opinion there is a lot of truth in this sentence.

Condor = holiday airline – that’s probably what most people associate with and unlike their colleagues and competitors at “TUIFly”, a big mistake was ironed out very quickly, the brief name change, back then, to Thomas Cook Airlines. Why should the boss of another tour operator put his guests on a plane that clearly has the name of a competitor on it? A huge mistake, which was made when switching from Hapag Lloyd Flug to TUIFly, and still is today.

Back to the "new" Condor.

After the initial shock of the new paintwork has dissipated, I can understand the basic IDEA, away from the boring Euro White - a bit rebellious, rebellious - stubborn, just striking. If you had announced THIS change just 48 hours earlier, I would have thought it was a belated April Fool's joke.

Even if the whole execution reminds me of my first attempts under Windows 95 in "MS Paint", I have to agree with Teckentrup (once again) about one thing: it gets less bad every time I look at it. If you can manage to add a slightly larger "Condor" logo (in the old DC-10 style) to the very empty-looking vertical stabilizer - and not just "clap" this into the top corner, I could support the new corporate identity maybe even gain a little more. The idea with the "est 1956" is really great.

Dear Condor Marketing & PR Department,

I know that you are now giving your planes and cabins new colors. However, as a passionate, albeit former, flight attendant, I would like to ask one thing of you; please spare the uniform (clothes) of your crews!

I know that these (still) come from the classic variant of the other feathered competition - the house of cranes. Please just think of the external effect of a similar uniform design of your crews, these would then come closer to Swedish curtains - prison clothing, than beach towels or umbrellas that the airplanes are supposed to remind you of. Finally, it should be said that even the last critic will get used to the colourful, pardon me – striped sight of the planes over time.