Meditations on a Coaster
November 22, 2025
You’re in a hotel room in London. There’s a coaster on the desk in the design of a Union Jack (or half of one, at any rate).
Very British, very typical. But you see something else. You cover part of the flag with your hand, revealing a different design.
Then you cover it a slightly different way, revealing yet a third design. Like this…
What you’ve created are the 1970s-era logos of British European Airways (BEA) and British Airways.
BEA was a mainstay U.K. carrier that flew throughout Europe. Its “speedjack” logo was a segmented Union Jack. In 1974 BEA merged with B.O.A.C to form British Airways. The first tail livery worn by British Airways also was a segmented Union Jack, a version of which is still used today. They looked like this…
The fact you noticed this with hardly a glance makes you both pleased and uneasy.
On the one hand, you take pride in a level of knowledge that some might call encyclopedic. On the other hand, you suspect there are better things for your mind to concern itself with. Your talents of perception, you worry, are badly off-balance, hijacked by frivolous aviation esoterica. Take it easy, man. Sometimes a Union Jack is just a Union Jack.
So it goes when you’re an air travel nerd. You can’t help yourself. The world is always more interesting when something, anything, relates back to airlines or planes. And it happens a lot. Maybe it’s a tangible item, like a coaster. Maybe it’s something you saw in the news; something cultural, political, or a current event. Almost always there’s a connection.
This is a testament to your passion. It’s also a testament to the significance, and ubiquity, of commercial air travel. The world would be very, very different without it. Probably less fun, too.
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7 Responses to “Meditations on a Coaster”
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Far out. If you bite the bottom off an ice cream cup (the kind that were meant to hold ice cream, vaguely torch-shaped, sold in stacks, wrapped and boxed) you will see the early Husker Du logo.
My FIL was a 747 check captain for BA – ex BOAC – he still referred to the BOAC/BEA cliques decades after the merger; I think the long-haul types still slightly lorded it over the short haul guys for a long while…
I’m the exact same way with railroad logo’s. I know em all! Got me into my career as a railroader and retired as a conductor in 2014. My obsession did anyway…
As an aside, we took trains from Grand Rapids, Michigan into Bensenville, Illinois right outside O’Hare. Stayed in a HoJo’s where many international crews stayed…I always got a room facing the airport to watch the planes come and go. Had a scanner to listen too.
I guess that makes me a nerd eh?
This is me every time I see the flag of St. Lucia 🙂
Apparently origami is too difficult for these pilots.
Sorry but my pedantic streak has struck again. The BEA logo is not a partial Union Jack, as the white stripes are all the same width. Compare your second photo of the coaster with the logo and you’ll see it’s not the same.
It’s obviously inspired by the Union Jack, but as it’s also supposed to represent an aircraft it needs to be symmetrical, which the Union Jack isn’t.
That’s rather fun. At first glance I assumed a relic of the cool britannia era.