The comings and goings at the Star Alliance are illustrated quite clearly on this bmi Airbus A320, which is a regular at London Heathrow.
There are in fact four changes to the line-up that need to be made the next time this aircraft, registration G-MIDX, has a new paint job: Ansett Australia has gone bust; Varig has disappeared and membership of Star has gone too; Mexicana left the alliance in favour of a bilateral relationship with American Airlines; and Tyrolean Airways has become Austrian Arrows.
Not only are the old members still on display, there are new ones waiting to find their pride of place on bmi's Airbus, for example, Swiss and South African Airways.
Star has a policy that requires all members to paint at least one of their fleet with the Star branding (as this picture of an All Nippon Airways Boeing 777 shows). Bmi's A320 shows one of the first attempts at this branding with each of the members listed on the aircraft's body.
Today the branding highlights the Star name and its trademark Star logo with the airline name featuring in smaller letters. This gets around the issue of churn amongst members that leave aircraft like bmi's A320 somewhat out of date.
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