Though a dying practice, naming of vehicle – from ships to aircraft – has a colourful history and is a useful business proposition

For most of us flying is routine these days. We board the aircraft thinking about our destination, but not so much about the journey (unless we’re in the unfortunate fear-of-flying club). We may note in a vague way whether we’re flying Airbus, Boeing or Bombardier, but the individual planes hardly stand out.

But not if you’re flying SpiceJet where, as you get down from the bus on the tarmac and wait to climb the steps, you can take a look at the front of the plane and see a name painted near the nose. They are all names of spices, which is logical enough given the airline’s name, but what is interesting, and perhaps admirable is that SpiceJet has stuck to the theme with such thoroughness that it has aircraft named not just after sweetly aromatic spices like cinnamon and clove, but also more pungent ones like mustard and chilli. There is even the Garlic, a Boeing jet, and the Heeng, a Bombardier turboprop.

Some of the spices are doubled: there is Cardamom and also Elaichi. Priti Dey, executive, corporate communications at SpiceJet explains that the English names were there from the start of the airlines, but when they got the smaller Bombardiers for regional flights they decided to use the Indian names for spices, inviting people to suggest the names: “The response was over whelming. The winner of this contest was invited to inaugurated the first flight which took off from Hyderabad to Tirupati.”

If SpiceJet’s use of individual names for its planes seems unusual, it wasn’t always the case. It was common earlier for airlines to baptize their new craft, especially when they started with an important new model. Air India famously took delivery of its first 747 in 1971 and named it Emperor Ashoka and followed that with others, like the ill-fated Emperor Kanishka that was destroyed by a bomb (Ashoka also crashed, in 1978). After that AI followed with themes like Indian rivers, ragas and states.

Patrick Smith, who is a professional pilot and also writes a popular online column called ‘Ask The Pilot’ on Salon.com is a fan of the practice. “It somehow makes the airplane, and the experience of air travel, a touch less impersonal,” he says. It linked back to the earliest days of aviation, when each aircraft was something special and flying was a thrilling, even glamorous experience.

Smith gives the example of Pan Am which used nautical references, “a carryover from the airline’s grandiose earlier years when its flying boats pioneered routes across the oceans. There were nautical references—Sea Serpent, Mermaid, Gem of the Ocean—including a particular fascination with waves—Crest of the Wave, Dashing Wave, Wild Wave.” Later on more conventional heroic names like the names of Greek and Roman gods would be used, but the company also used eccentric names like Water Witch and Neptune’s Car, which were taken from the names of old sailing vessels. In doing this Pan Am was harking back centuries to when the practice of vehicular names started with ships. Sailors would spend large parts of their lives on them, so it was only natural that they would give their ships names, as with their homes. Some of the names would have been propitiatory, since sailing was dangerous, and sailors are notoriously superstitious, always looking out for lucky charms and names. Ships were also expensive and built individually, over much time, and it is human nature to give names to things that we have to value.

Many of us will have memories of doing the same. The first bike we had to save up to buy, or perhaps our first car always had a special value and we proudly gave them names. Some of these names might have been ironic, or jokey (Joy Bhattacharjya, who is team director for Kolkata Knight Riders recalls how his first car was an Ikon which he called Robert “because it was a Red Ford!”), but this was just to cover up our real feelings for the vehicle. For most of us, it was the first major purchase we made by ourselves, and it was one that literally took us places! But in time that first vehicle would be sold or passed on, and we would get others, much fancier, but that sense of attachment was never the same. We would also keep these new cars for shorter periods, before selling and moving on to something new. In time many of us would also get more than one vehicle, and as a final sign of detachment we would hand it over to a driver.

It is notable that taximen are among the few drivers who sometimes keep up this practice of naming. Amitabh Bachchan, playing a taximan in Khud-Dar called his car Basanti. There is a taximan who keeps his car at a stand near where I stay, and on his new yellow and black Hyundai Santro he has proudly painted the name: Black Queen. Taxis that belong to the new commercial companies, and which aren’t driven by their owners, never have such names. And this is, in a way, why most airlines have dropped the practice. Their fleets are so large now that individual planes no longer feel special. The pilots who fly them are, all too often, shuttling between airlines in search of jobs and can’t build special ties to any airline, leave alone its aircraft. And as a final blow to the practice, many companies don’t even own their aircraft, but hire them as needed from the large aircraft leasing companies. (The owner of the most aircraft in the world is now General Electric’s GECAS subsidiary with 1800 planes).

Yet some airlines like SpiceJet buck the trend. Lufthansa names its planes after German cities, Aer Lingus after Irish saints and KLM after a mix of birds, famous women and destinations. But perhaps the biggest enthusiast is Sir Richard Branson who has, as always with him, made naming part of the brand strategy and the image of fun he projects for Virgin. “We call our aircraft ‘flying ladies’ and naming these gorgeous flying machines is all part of the fun for us,” he says. “It’s something that inspires everyone from our customers to our pilots, crew and engineers, right through to the ground staff.” Branson deliberately makes the link to the glamorous old days: “An aircraft is not a commodity at Virgin Atlantic – it’s part of the aspiration of flying around the world in a fun and glamorous way.”

His very first plane was called Maiden Voyager, and the most recent was Golden Girl, a special tribute to the British Olympic team. Luke Miles, the head of design at Virgin Atlantic, explains that they look for names that combine the tradition of ship names being female with “something extraordinary, optimistic and confident, and to raise a smile.” Virgin names use puns, like ‘Miss Behavin’, and also refer to popular culture, with names from films like ‘Barbarella’ or ‘Pretty Woman’, or songs like ‘Jersey Girl’, ‘Dancing Queen’ or ‘Mustang Sally’ or fairy tales like ‘Sleeping Beauty’. ‘Tubular Belle’ involves music and a pun, but Miles notes it also has special significance for Branson: Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells was the first album released by Virgin Records and its smash hit gave the company an important beginning boost. The company also acknowledges its new destinations – ‘Indian Princess’ was named after Virgin started its India flights.

But the company also takes its use of naming even further, by trying to find appropriate letter combinations for the aircrafts’ registration codes. These are the three letters added to the prefix G-V which are the technical identifiers for all planes, but Virgin puts a lot of creativity goes in matching them to plane names. ‘Uptown Girl’ is G-VNYC, ‘Diamond Girl’ is G-VGEM, ‘Champagne Belle’ is G-VINE, ‘Miss Sunshine’ is G-VRAY – and ‘Indian Princess’ is ‘G-VGOA! Miles says that customers, particularly frequent fliers, know about this and look out for them on the planes they fly: “They often ask which one they are flying so they can tick it off their list.”

Dey says SpiceJet passengers have asked the ground staff which planes they would be flying that day: “We get tweets, facebook posts and foursquare checking saying flying @clove, ginger.. We recently conducted a plane spotting contest for Facebook users. The response that we got was amazing. People clicked pictures of our various SpiceJet aircraft and even indentified them with their names.” Apart from contests and social media, aircraft names can be utilised for other social purposes. In 2006 Virgin auctioned a plane’s name for the benefit of the group’s Virgin Unite charitable arm. The winner, Andrew Heaney, named the plane for his daughter, Emmeline, and the Airbus ‘Emmeline Heaney’ is now flying with the registration code G-VYOU.

Names can also be used as a way of honouring people – the one exception to Virgin’s female names was one of their first planes which he called ‘Spirit of Sir Freddie’ after Sir Freddie Laker, the pioneer of low-cost aviation (and high-level personal publicity), an important inspiration to Branson in starting his airline. And here is the best part about all this – it costs the airline almost nothing. Miles says that the aircraft’s unique livery is something they are going to invest in anyway and the name is part of that. “It’s only the little effort on deciding the name,” says SpiceJet’s Dey. And it is almost risk-free since the only people likely to notice the names are the ones who are likely to approve of the concept or find it amusing. Or look at it this – the airline may have passengers who don’t much like garlic, but they are unlikely to have noticed or to care about flying the SpiceJet Garlic.

Vikram.doctor@timesgroup.com