posted 17 March 2002 16:24            

American celebrated it's inauguration of the first jet transcontinental service by adorning one of their 757s in the Astrojet livery worn by the 707s in those days. A 737-800 is also adorned with Astrojet livery as well and recently, Avianca has celebrated their 80th Anniversary with retrojet liveries on a 757-200 and an MD-80. So it only makes sense to me that TWA should have had some retrojets and this twinpack features TWA's two previous liveries, a 757 each in the earlier twin-globe livery and one in the later twin red stripe livery.

The first jet is in the livery that was designed by Raymond Loewy that first appeared on TWA's 707s in 1959. What was then referred to as the "arrowhead" cheatline livery, the golden twin globes were added shortly after but the first appearances of the livery lacked the twin globes. However, the twin-globes were one of the most recognized corporate logos of its day. Pilots would comment their 707s looked like "they were going 600 mph on the ground!". Raymond Loewy is one of the most notable of American designers and you've probably seen most of his other works- he's responsible for the design of Coca-Cola bottles, as well as for the corporate logos for Shell, Exxon, and Greyhound. In the aviation field Loewy designed the interiors of Lockheed Constellations, created the Air Force One livery with Jacqueline Kennedy that's still used today, and also designed the United jet mainliner livery and it's later Friendship/Stars and Bars variation.

On the 757 this livery looks great, accentuating the sleekness of the jet. The 707-300s that TWA put into intercontinental service in competition with Pan American were styled as "StarStream" jets, carrying the traditions of the Constellation and Starliner. So, this one becomes the "StarStream 757 Retrojet".

The second TWA retrojet wears the twin red stripe livery which I don't believe 757s ever wore. The twin red stripe livery hearkened back to the pre-jet livery worn by TWA's Constellations and Starliners. I've chosen the twin red stripe livery with the solid titles (the first version of this livery had hollow "Trans World" titles and were found to be hard to see) but I've also added the TWA logo to the nacelles in a manner similar to what the first 767-200s wore when they entered service with TWA in 1982. This was a nostalgiac tip back to the days of the Super Constellations which had similar logo/striping on the tip tanks.

In a further reference to the days of the Constellations, I've also given this retrojet the name Star of Kansas City. TWA's Connies and Starliners carried such names, but these weren't carried over to the jet fleet when the 707s came into service. However, there was one and only one TWA jet that had a star titles and that was a single 767-200 (N610TW) which was christened Star of Geneva. I'd played around with star names on this one but settled on Star of Kansas City for the following reasons- KC was TWA's first homebase and having lived there for three years, folks in Kansas City still call TWA their hometown airline. In TWA's formative days, the scenic Downtown Kansas City Airport (MKC)was it's HQ and if you go the MKC today you can still see the old Transcontinental and Western HQ/hangar building restored beatifully as it serves as a Beechcraft/Raytheon dealership. TWA also had a heavy maintenance base at Kansas City International (MCI) and were the first tenants when it first opened in the 1950s as Mid-Contintent Airport (and that's why KCI's airport code is MCI...). For years you could see the retired jets of TWA's fleet from 707s and CV880s to 727s and 747s parked on the aprons of the maintenance base on the east side of KCI. So even though TWA is a St. Louis-based airline (or was, until the buyout by AA), it's REAL roots are in Kansas City.