To celebrate the arrival of its new Airbus A350-1000 aircraft, Virgin Atlantic is retiring its long-standing mascot and unveiling five new emblems to appear on its updated fleet.
The airline’s familiar Flying Lady will be replaced by five new “Flying Icons,” created to better reflect the diversity of Virgin Atlantic’s customers and employees. These new icons will be featured on four aircraft this year, with an additional eight aircraft scheduled to receive them in 2020.
The original Flying Lady was inspired by traditional ship figureheads. While iconic, the airline felt a new visual approach would better represent its evolving identity.
This visual change is part of a broader push by Virgin Atlantic to improve diversity and inclusion across the business. The airline has committed to addressing its gender pay gap and to increasing representation in leadership and across the workforce. Specifically, Virgin Atlantic has set aims to reach a 50:50 gender balance in leadership roles and at least 12 percent representation from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups across the company by 2022.
Virgin Atlantic has taken concrete steps toward these goals. The airline was a founding member of Women in Aviation and Aerospace and signed the United Kingdom’s Women in Hospitality, Travel and Leisure charter, demonstrating its commitment to industry-wide progress.
“The saying goes ‘You can’t be what you can’t see,’ and that has never been truer than in aviation,” said Nikki Humphrey, senior vice president at Virgin Atlantic. “We have been working for several years to close our gender pay gap, build a more inclusive workplace and increase workforce diversity through initiatives such as our Springboard program for women and new engineering apprenticeships. By introducing our new Flying Icons, we hope to encourage people from all backgrounds to feel at home flying with us and working with us.”
The new icons mark a visible shift in the airline’s branding, aligning its exterior imagery with the internal efforts to create a more representative and inclusive company culture.