AirAsia Japan rebranded as Vanilla Air

If they served ice cream onboard would they call it Vanilla Ice?

call it by any name....so long it is under Japan's management the losses and re-naming will be unavoidable.

So only white people can fly?

Anyone that chooses an airline based on some cute sounding name is a fool.

Their logo also looks low-budget.

The name and logo make it sound like a kind of fluffy new yogurt. They took a month and a half to decide, and this is the best they could do.

WHY??????????

Why would a Japanese company adopt a name that most people in the country can't pronounce? Baneera Air?

The name sounds like a type of fragrance of Yankee Candle.

Baneera I laughed myself sick, shinhiyata

Too many dumb top executives in Japan, the names of many Japanese cars are a clue to their stupidity. So, Vanilla Air , no surprise !

Not the first quirky name for a Japanese airline. 'Air Do' sounds like what my gran used to go to the salon for. And the genesis of 'Solaseed' is very quirky (complete the following in Japanese ... Do, Re, Me, Fa ...)

Also, in the world of finance a 'straightforward' deal is aka 'plain vanilla'. Heh.

It looks a bit like the WalMart logo.

"I think it is a very cute name.”

Cute? perhaps. Stupid for an airline? definitely.

Soon to be challenged by new airlines Strawberry, Chocolate and S&M....

Right up there with "Peach" for stupid airline names. At the end of the day, the Japanese consumer would rather pay more with a Japanese company than go with a foreign company. We've seen this time and time again. A new silly name, run by the Japanese? It should do well. Air Asia should have done well but the sheelpe just couldn't get their head around not flying Japanese...

At least, they went plain instead of 'Rocky road'...

I agree with tmarie. I know people here who would pay triple to fly with a Japanese carrier rather than go a little out of their way, distance/time wise, to fly with a foreign LCC.

WTF! I just spit coffee onto my laptop haha.........Japan after all these decades is still very much in need of running this stuff by REAL people before deciding these names LOL!!!!!!!

I think Rocky Road might have been more appropriate as an ice cream flavour.

Bring on those cheap fares!! God bless Peach and Vanilla Air.

This site never ceases to amaze me. What inane comments.

French Vanilla tastes better. But the name "French Vanilla Air" would not work well for domestic flights in Japan. Maybe they could have called it "Nihon Vanilla Air" and then served French Vanilla ice cream on flights but with little mochi balls in it.

But everyone loves vanilla, right?

Vanilla Air? I wonder what their motto will be...perhaps something like "bringing nature to ice cream to create a better air"? Better stopping joking, they might as well think this is a good motto...

Definitions of Vanilla as an adjective from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1) flavored with vanilla 2) lacking distinction: plain, ordinary, conventional.

In other words, BORING! Typical Japan.

ii kaori!!! Will the cabins be misted with vanilla air? Think of all the omiyage tie-ins here. These LCCs are often marketed at young women who go on budget group holidays and like buying cute things. Not your sophis flyer.

Direct flights to Bangkok, Vietnam and Singapore, please. Kuala Lumpur and Korea just doesn't do it for me.

Sales tactics. Aimed for Japanese girls/women. Might work.

The pronunciation is closer to "bunny"-la. Bani-la. They like saying it.

I dream of Haagen-Dazs. And bananas. That flies.

Well Richard Branson was able to take the noun "virgin" to a different level...

Vanilla is too............ vanilla. Not as exciting.

I think its not re-branding of Air Asia but rather a completely new LCC launch and hiring staff of AirAsia Japan.

sounds like MANILLA AIR...

So the Brits can call an airline VIRGIN but the Japanese can not go with Vanilla?? Go figure!!

Best thing they could have possibly done distancing themselves from AirAsia.

AA are the lowest of the low as far as LCCs go. Cancelling a flight on 12 hours or less notice if there aren't enough sold seats to break even is commonplace, and their refund process is designed to draw the whole thing out past the point where credit card charges can be disputed.

Good, now make cheap prices like Peach and Jetstar do. Every time I check Air Asia and Skymark's websites, I never find any ticket to consider them a reasonable LCC.

Bland Air? They have a new brand which is Bland Air? who pays these morons. I remember the advertising people at business school. essentially the ones to stupid to do a proper degree and just a step above "management" majors.... this what comes of that...

Marketing guy/girls thoughts//// "hmm I sure feel like some ice cream coz it's hot. Damn I have that 20 Million account to complete in 5 mins as I've spent the last 3 months looking at facebook... man tis icecream is good...what's the flavour? V a.n i l l a ? hey.. that gives me an idea"

Soon to be challenged by Chocolate Air, Strawberry Air and Rum Raisin Air!

They could call it Motherloving Air, for all I care. The thing that gets me is their reason for it. "Everyone loves vanilla."

Rather than trying to pick a safe name that 'everybody' already 'loves', how about being a brand that everybody respects, therefore establishing your own identity. Seriously, this sounds like a placeholder name that they would use during the planning stages, before they roll out the real name.

Vanilla Sky.

Every one of their aircraft should be christened "Plane Vanilla."

They should have called Ben & Jerry's for advice.

Rocky Road aka Locky Lodo...

It could have been worse, they could have called it "Chocoreto Air" imagine that for a moment.

"Plane Vanilla"

Hee hee!

Japanese don't pronounce it as Baneera, people saying this can't speak Japanese.

They pronounce it as Banira, very easy...