By Ian McMurtry
Alaska Adds ‘Galaxy’s Edge’ to Disneyland Family of Special Liveries
Alaska Airlines and the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California celebrated “Star Wars Day” with an unveiling on the latest Disneyland promotional jet for the Seattle-based airline. The Boeing 737-800, wearing registration N538AS, now dons a black space theme and has been given the title of “Star Wars Transport to the Disneyland Resort” in long withstanding continued collaboration with the resort.
The jet is themed around the movie series Star Wars and the theme park’s dedicated section to the series titled “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge”. The California park’s version of the space universe opened to the public in May 2019, with Florida’s Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios getting a similar part in the following August. Similar to Galaxy’s Edge, the centerpiece of the design is focused on the Millennium Falcon, which for the Alaska livery takes up the tail and rear fuselage. The livery also focuses on enemy TIE fighters covering the fuselage giving chase to the Millennium Falcon. The Boeing 737 also has unique winglets, with creatures from the latest trilogy called Porgs appearing on the inside of the winglets looking back at passengers on the voyage.
The airline has special winglets featuring the porg, a creature from Luke Skywalker’s island in the most recent trilogy (Photo: Alaska Airlines)
The aircraft replaced the last Alaska aircraft wearing the “Hawaiian Lei” on the 1990s icicles livery. The aircraft would take 228 gallons of paint and 23 base colors to complete the space fantasy theme. Overall, 27 days would be devoted to turning a standard Alaska plane into the next iteration of the Disneyland family of planes in the Seattle carrier’s fleet.
For Alaska, the launch of “Star Wars Transport to the Disneyland Resort” marks the seventh aircraft to wear Disneyland sponsorship. Other planes in the past have worn legacy characters like Tinker Belle and Mickey Mouse, while more recent Disneyland special liveries promote new sections of the park, such as Carsland, Pixar Pier and now Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
Star Wars has been a common special livery for various airlines over the past decade. United had a Boeing 737-800 in a similar space themed livery for the launch of the third trilogy’s finale “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” in 2020. All Nippon Airways of Japan had a trio of Boeing widebodies themed around the droids of the story, with a Boeing 777-200 and a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner still active themed around C-3P0 and R2-D2, respectively. The Boeing 777-300ER themed to the droid BB-8 was retired in early 2022 as the aircraft reached the end of its service life with ANA. A Boeing 777-300ER still exists in Star Wars colors through LATAM Airlines, who promotes the Florida version of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge with the aircraft wearing the color scheme of the Storm Trooper, an soldier from the series.
Alaska went all in on promoting the new scheme, offering passengers with Star Wars attire priority boarding on May 4 to celebrate the event. The airline also offered a fourth ticket free when booking three tickets on May 4 with an origin or destination being Hollywood Burbank Airport or Orange County Airport between May 5 and June 26.
Although Ian McMurtry was never originally an avgeek, he did enjoy watching US Airways aircraft across western Pennsylvania in the early 2000s. He lived along the Pennsylvania Railroad and took a liking to trains but a change of scenery in the mid-2000s saw him shift more of an interest into aviation. He would eventually express this passion by taking flying lessons in mid-Missouri and joining AirlineGeeks in 2013. Now living in Wichita, Kansas, Ian is in college majoring in aerospace engineering and minoring in business administration at Wichita State University.
