JUST FOR FUN: Braniff Electras of a different color...
Posted 10-09-2007 at 10:47 PM by Sentinel Chicken
Tags braniff international, electra
Back in January 2005 I had created these as a fun little "what if"- suppose Braniff International held onto its Lockheed Electras just a bit longer? They're much older and to a lesser quality than my current work but it makes an interesting comparison to my current work. Besides, that, these were fun to do!
Braniff signed for 9 Electras on 20 February 1956 and entered the turbine age with Electra service starting 15 June 1959 on the San Antonio-Dallas-New York and Houston-Dallas-Chicago routes. Within the year, Braniff's Electras were ranging far and wide in the network and even flew to Mexico City as well. Popular and dependable, the Electras flown by Braniff were unique in that they had an alternating four-abreast/five-abreast cabin arrangement.
Though the loss of one of the Electras over Buffalo, Texas, due to whirl mode flutter, was damaging to the repuation of an otherwise fine airliner, it was Harding Lawrence who really spelled the end of the Electra in Braniff operations. Braniff's hard-charging and sometimes controversial president took the helm in April 1965. While best known for bringing the "End of the Plain Plane" campaign into fruition under the direction of his wife, advertsing executive Mary Wells, it wasn't all Jellybeans for the Electra.
Harding Lawrence wanted to simplify the Braniff fleet and become an all-Boeing airline. And, quite simply, in the face of newer jets, props, even if they were prop-jets, were just too old fashioned. The Electras were sold en masse to a bank and leased for just one more year before being pulled from service in March 1969.
But what if the Electras stayed on longer? Suppose the Middle East oil crisis began sooner and gas prices started climbing in 1968 instead of 1973? Then perhaps Braniff would have held on to its Electras in lieu of gas-guzzling lead sleds like the BAC 1-11. And if they held onto them long enough, they might have even gotten the Flying Colors livery which was introduced to the Braniff fleet in 1971.
My four-pack of illustrations depict what those Electras would have looked like in the Flying Colors livery. Mighty sexy, I might add.
