Hey all,

Recently heard an airline refer to one of their flights as "flagship service." What is meant by this?

 

Thanks!

Was it American by any chance?  They've used "Flagship" as a promotional name all the way back to the 1930s, when individual airplanes had Flagship names (Flagship Holland, Flagship Detroit) in the same way that Pan Am airplanes had Clipper names and United airplanes had Mainliner names.  The original American DC-3s were called Flagship Skysleepers. I gather they still use the term for some services  (like Flagship Lounges). It's all supposed to give a nautical flavor, with a touch of glamor and excitement. If it was some other airline, then I'm off base - though the same idea may be in play. 

Air New Zealand's is ANZ1, but their is nothing really more special about the service. It is great marketing as it runs from Auckland to LAX to Heathrow and back so this is the one they use the All Black 777 or the Hobbits schemes etc, great marketing for them. That All Black 777 does look spectacular coming out of the smog in LA when landing.

On 3/29/2017 at 0:28 AM, Alan_A said:

Was it American by any chance?  They've used "Flagship" as a promotional name all the way back to the 1930s, when individual airplanes had Flagship names (Flagship Holland, Flagship Detroit) in the same way that Pan Am airplanes had Clipper names and United airplanes had Mainliner names.  The original American DC-3s were called Flagship Skysleepers. I gather they still use the term for some services  (like Flagship Lounges). It's all supposed to give a nautical flavor, with a touch of glamor and excitement. If it was some other airline, then I'm off base - though the same idea may be in play. 

Makes sense, but yeah in this case it was Lufthansa's A380 service from Frankfurt to San Francisco. Actually here's the video for reference:

 

Ah, interesting!  Seems that Lufthansa has adopted "flagship" for its A380 and 747-8 aircraft.  They also have "Flagship Lounges."  So the idea is similar to what American was doing in the middle of the last century - using "flagship" as a promotional term to suggest that their service (or parts of it) is a cut above.

Here's a press release from 2015 that shows how they use "Flagship" to refer to both types.

Nice that somebody's trying to keep standards up, in an era where cattle-car service is mostly the norm.