Talk to airliner fans and the thing that seems to interest them more than any other subject is livery. One thing for sure, most airliners are colorful and that seems to be true of civil aircraft in general. No need to go sneaking around in camouflage as to be seen is of much greater importance. In terms of airliners, I've always wondered a bit about this. If you think about it, you choose an airline because of its reputation or its schedule of flights, not by how the plane is painted.  However, I digress.

The range of colors and markings on civil aircraft is truly staggering and Gerry Manning has put together this most impressive volume that is crammed full of color. While the vast majority of what is in here are airliners, there are a number of other large civil aircraft, including fire bombers, 'bush' aircraft and large helicopters. In fact, the number and quality of the photographs is a bit overwhelming at first, requiring several re-readings to get everything in.

Somewhat arranged alphabetically, there are images from both past and present as some of these planes are no longer flying or no longer in the liveries shown. This is especially true of airlines where often times mergers and bankruptcies will have a livery disappear seemingly overnight.

Based in Europe, it is not surprising that this book has a decidedly European flavor. I was looking for some of my old favorites like Aspen, Ozark and PanAm, but they seem to have been missed. Not really surprising and I'm sure that there are a lot more that were not included either due to space or because the author or his other contacts was unable to photograph it.

Are there really 1000 photos? If not, it is pretty darn close as there are 6 photos on each page and the sections with special livery and tail colors have even more.

Overall, this is a superb book for those to whom color is of paramount importance and a real inspiration for airliner fans.

January 2006

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