Since the start of commercial aviation, many airlines have arranged to have their planes displayed prominently in movies. This form of advertising is called product placement. Airlines hope that being displayed in movies will attract new business by increasing their mind share among their target market and by portraying a glamorous image.
This product placement provides an additional source of income for movie houses. If no airline has paid the producer's fees in order to feature in the movie, a producer will either use a fictional airline name, film aircraft landing or departing, possibly without revealing the plane's livery, or only use interior cabin or cockpit views. When an airline has paid to be shown, its name will be prominently shown during appropriate parts of the movie.
Among the airlines seen prominently in different movies are:
Air France (in Airport '79: The Concorde and Kiss of the Dragon. The livery was changed for Airport 79, but you can tell the plane is from Air France. At the beginning of the movie the Concorde is being delivered from Paris to the new owners in the USA. Also, in one scene the registration F-BTSC can clearly be seen on the tail.)
If the film script requires an aircraft to crash or explode, there is less likelihood that a real airline will want to be associated with it and a fictitious name, livery and airline call sign are most likely employed.
In cheaper or less professionally directed films it is common to see characters depart in one type of airliner and arrive in another, or to depart and arrive at the same airport, even though the script implies that they are travelling elsewhere. Low budget films will often exhibit a discontinuity between the aircraft seen and the soundtrack heard, as producers simplistically assume that all jets sound the same. Unfortunately a film can soon look dated if a real airline features prominently, because that airline may collapse, change its livery or merge with another. One notable example of this was 2001: A Space Odyssey which contained references to Pan Am spaceflights, although the actual Pan Am went bankrupt in the 1990's. Perhaps that is why landings and departures are often filmed from a position near to the centreline of a runway, which makes the external livery of the aircraft less obvious to the audience.
Airlines hope that being displayed in movies will attract new business by increasing their mind share among their target market and by portraying a glamorous image.
If no airline has paid the producer's fees in order to feature in the movie, a producer will either use a fictional airline name, film aircraft landing or departing, possibly without revealing the plane's livery, or only use interior cabin or cockpit views.
A fictitious name, livery and airline call sign are commonly employed, such as the popular brand Oceanic Airlines.
Pacific Airlines, originally known as Southwest Airways when it was founded in 1941, was based in San Francisco and flew along the coast linking communities from Portland, Oregon to Southern California.
In 1980, the airline was purchased by Republic Airlines, which in turn merged with Northwest Airlines in 1986.
Because of this, their airplanes were often dubbed "flying bananas" and the airline even launched an advertising campaign with the catchphrase "Top Banana in the West".
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