Why No Fancy Commercial Passenger Aircraft Names Postwar?

[mz]

There were the Lockheed Constellation, Boeing Stratocruiser, even the De Havilland Comet. But after that the planes just started getting boring number names - why? Convair Coronado or Sud Caravelle might have been the last commercial large airplane with a name (and it had a number as well)? Douglas had stopped even earlier (or had it ever even started?)

If we disregard Concorde as noncommercial, it's probably no names until the 787 Dreamliner, and even that is debatable, I don't know if anyone really uses that.

I realize the answer might already be somewhere but this is a bit hard to search, being such a nebulous question.

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

I'm not sure how true that is -- there were a number of planes that didn't have a name back in the old days (i.e. Boeing 247, DC-1, DC-2, DC-3 and so on). Although you may be right in that percentage-wise less planes now have names and are just given numbers

Technically there are at least a couple of planes since the jet age that have names. The Concorde as you said, the L-1011 was called the Tristar, the Dassault Mercure's a name, if you count commuter planes the EMB-120 was called the Brazilia.


KJ Lesnick

 

[Just call me Ray]

It's because neither Boeing nor Douglas had much of a naming scheme before the war, as Kendra pointed out, and that continued after the war, and they pretty much became the dominant jetliner manufacturers of the postwar period. If Lockheed were dominant you would probably see more fancy names. Airbus probably decided to just follow Boeing's example.

 

[Stargazer]

The Sud-Aviation entry for what became the initial Airbus A300 had a name : Galion.
Some Soviet airliners had a name : An-10 Ukraina, Tu-114 Rossyia.

 

[riggerrob]

Douglas had their "Douglas Sleeper Transport" (DST) but the name never really stuck, so they just went to "Douglas Commercial."

 

[publiusr]

Even spy photos of cars aren't as big a deal it seems. I hate all these plain-jane twinjets. Nothing is special anymore.

 

[Archibald]

Concord(e) Caravelle Languedoc Cormoran - and Dassault bizjets - Falcon / Mystère.