Republik Singapura
Republic of Singapore; 新加坡共和国; சிங்கப்பூர் குடியரசு
Board of Commissioners of Currency/Monetary Authority of Singapore
Board of Commissioners of Currency/Monetary Authority of Singapore
Did you know this?
Singapore Airlines (SIA) had never owned a Concorde airplane. The Concorde London to Singapore service via Bahrain was a joint venture between British Airways (BA) and SIA, which started on 9 December 1977 and only lasted for 3 return flights after the Malaysian government withdrew it's permission to overfly the Straits of Malacca. The dispute was then resolved and on 24 January 1979, the service was resumed but again ended on 1 November 1979 but this time it was due to commercial reasons as the service was not making any profit, about £2 million lost a year for this service alone.
Singapore issued a $20 Bird series note on 06.08.1979, 86 days before the Concorde service was cancelled for good. The design on the back of this note shows the right side of a Concorde taking off at the Singapore Paya Lebar International airport (the old international airport before moving to Changi International Airport).
The reason I have posted this note is the design of SIA's livery on the tail of the Concorde plane. As I said before that SIA had never owned a Concorde airplane and this joint venture with BA allowed SIA to have it's livery painted on the tail of the plane thus giving the company excellent publicity for it's brand image worldwide. The agreement allows the liveries of both companies to be painted on the tail of the airplane, BA and SIA. From the note below you can see that the SIA's livery was painted on the right side of the plane's tail, and this is incorrect. Only one Concorde (G-BOAD) was used for this route between London and Singapore. At the time of the service, the British Airway's livery was actually painted on the right side of the tail and the SIA's livery was painted on the left side. Technically, this is an error note, error due to designing.
Do a quick search on the Internet with the following words - "Images for SIA Concorde Livery" and you will see what I mean.
It is very obvious that this was a design flaw. Whoever designed this must have forgotten that the finished product would have a mirror image printed out, or was the designer not aware which side of the SIA logo should be on in the first place? This should not be the case as the Concorde JV started in December 1977 and this $20 note was issued in August 1979. A new banknote project may take up to 12 months to complete and therefore a simple research would tell the designer where the SIA livery should be painted on. Whilst it may be easy to blame the designer, what about the person(s) who approved this before going into production? Well, only the team that was involved in this project can answer this question.
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| courtesy of diecastaircraftforum.com |
Twenty Dollars
From the design of the note (reverse) it should have the BA's livery instead of the SIA.
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