FORT WORTH, Texas — Last October, BNSF Railway had filed a suit over a start-up airline’s effort to use the name “Northern Pacific.” As of Sept. 8, 2023, a temporary outcome has surfaced.
Northern Pacific Airlines (NPA) has received a preliminary injunction — a “temporary relief” to keep things the way they are until the court makes a final decision. NPA can stay in business but must cease using the moniker Northern Pacific.
Forced to rebrand, it appears the airline will now be called New Pacific Airlines. The original website currently only has an “N” on it, and the NPA’s previous X (formerly Twitter) account and Facebook accounts have been removed.
The website Simple Flying said after trying to contact BNSF for comment, they received the following statement, “We don’t comment on pending litigation but would refer you to the court documents where the federal court in [Los Angeles] granted our request for an injunction to stop Northern Pacific Airways from using the ‘Northern Pacific’ trademark. To read more about the suit over trademark infringement, [see “BNSF sues airline over use of ‘Northern Pacific,'” Trains News Wire, October 25, 2022].
Simple Flying says, “The airline announced today [September 8] that it would be rebranding to a name not a million miles from its original one. New Pacific Airlines has already started to be used in company headers and email signatures, but its official changeover will come only with regulatory approval.” DOT and FAA approval will be needed prior to an official name change but it seems that NPA is working on it, and will not be appealing the case.
The big “N” used as a logo will stay. What will change with the new name is the ticketing platforms, marketing materials, and the livery such as repainting the fleet. NPA’s CEO Rob McKinney spoke to Simple Flying in this article and said “We’ve started the process. We’ve done as much as we can to move towards adopting the new name, and we’re taking it seriously.” It’s just going to take time for everything to be completely legalized and situated moving forward.
“Anytime you pick any name, you go out to the marketplace, and there’s a spectrum between little risk and 100% risk — there’s never zero risk. The report that we got suggested this was low on the risk scale, and it was actually lower on the risk scale than other things that we were considering at the time. So you just have to make a judgment call, and in this instance, we made the wrong one,” McKinney said to Simple Flying.
Speaking of trademark infringements, I recall sometime 10-15+ years ago (???), UPRR threatened a model train and/or decal manufacturer for providing UPRR decals on model trains without their permission. As I recall, UPRR finally dropped the matter for fear of bad public relations. I couldn’t find an online link on that issue. Anyone?
Who owns the names of
Penn Central, Reading, CNJ, Erie/DL&W/EL, LV (the Conrail components)?
For a few years in the late 90s, there was an airline called Western Pacific, only 15 years after the WP had been merged into UP. With no apparent trademark problems.
As if BNSF is ever going to use the NP name again. Seems very weird to me, but I guess you have to defend your trademarks or you lose them.
BNSF kept the trademark for a couple of reasons.
First is that they don’t want anyone else to be associated with that name., GM still owns the trademark for Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Saturn divisions that were shut down between 2000 and 2009 and other makes they acquired since it’s inception.
Another reason to keep a trademark is assets or debt on the balance sheets. They don’t want to confuse investors. It also could have tax implications. I believe that UP still has some former SP bonds outstanding from the late 50’s or early 60’s for example.
NPA got bad legal advice.
Olympian Air has a nice ring to it for an airline serving the Pacific Northwest.
Name is taken already, unless Greece’s flag carrier Olympic has gone out of business as other Euro flag carriers have.
BTW, worst time of my life was driving from SeaTac to the Olympian Peninsula. Don’t know how I survived it.
Just wanted to add a bit of fact and history with new companies and startups taking names of former companies. This one involves Major League Baseball. When the Montreal Expos moved from Canada to Washington D C. Some thought was given to renaming the Washington Senators, the name used by two previous teams that played in Washington D C The Minnesota Twins and the present day Texas Rangers who own the logo and copyright and name of the Washington Senators and never gave up that right or for the present franchise to use that name hence the Washington Nationals came into being. The moral of this story involving Northern Pacific Airways would have been to first look into copyright agreements and franchise name ownership with BNSF before rushing headlong and grabbing a name from another company without doing some research and consultation first Speaking of airline names, Im pretty sure somebody must own the rights to such storied names like TWA, Eastern, Pan American, Northwest Orient, Braniff etc
Joseph C. Markfelder
TWA is owned by American Airlines. Eastern was owned by Texas Air Corporation (Continental) but the name and logo was sold to a new company based in Miami and currently flies out of Miami to 1 destination. CSX currently owns the name and logo for PanAm. Northwest Orient is owned by Delta. Braniff as of today is still held in trust by the Braniff Family Trust. They reacquired the rights in 2020 after selling them off in 2015. The legal entity for the airline is still registered but not used.
As for railroads, I have checked on several defunct interurban lines to see if their name or logo assets were ever retained and for the most part none of them were. Since most of them were in bankruptcy of some kind by 1953, the name and assets were not retained when the land was sold. The only exception to that was Illinois Terminal, which its name and logo transferred to Norfolk & Western in 1981, now NS. Today there is a heritage engine with that layout.
When I checked on the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin, their bankruptcy assets were consolidated into a corporate entity called the Aurora Corporation. But that entity existed in 1960 to sell off the rolling stock, rail, land and buildings. The name and its logo were never marked or registered as such with the USPTO. So it was not included as an asset.
Why did I care? I looked into starting a midwest only regional airline using the CA&E name and logo. The finances didn’t work out, but at least I didn’t put myself into the same position as NPA.
I’m sure if a survey of the general public was made “Northern Pacific wouldn’t even register a blip unless they came across a convention of rail fans.
Of course a survey of the public would reveal that they don’t know who the US VP is or their congressional reps.
This shows BNSF attorneys are earning a little bit if their pay.
Interestingly a low cost carrier started business based in Colorado Springs. Its name — Western Pacific. However i was not aware of any objection to the use of that name by the Union Pacific. The airline went bankrupt in 1998 so maybe it died before the UP ever heard about it:-)
If you are starting a new company whether it is in transportation, retail banking or a supermarket chain, you wantyour own name and identity. It means being orginal and not being a copycat or digging up some old name or logo from the past. For this new budget airline to take an old name from a grand and respected railroad of the past and the Golden Age of Railroading shows cheap commercialism and a lack of imagination and orginality on the part of these “wizard executives” of this startup airline. James J Hill who was a founder of the Northern Pacific and was part of the Hill Lines must be smiling down on this decision. The great name of the Northern Pacific Railroad must never be used or connected with some cheap budget airline and the same goes for any new company startups trying to cash in on making a fast buck or two by taking names or logos of great companies and transportation giants of the past. If starting a new company, be orginal and come up with something new, orginal and unique. Dont be copycats.
Joseph C. Markfelder
Like calling your railroad PanAm?
Fair objection and arguably the most suitable solution!
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
Big news from a small airway! Say hello to New Pacific Airlines.
The company (formerly known as Corvus Airlines and Northern Pacific Airways) is a low-cost airline based in Anchorage, Alaska, United States. Operations commenced on July 14, 2023 with their inaugural flight from Ontario International Airport in Ontario, California, to Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada.
New Pacific unveiled their first Boeing 757 in their livery on January 18, 2022. As of September 2023, New Pacific owns 4 Boeing 757-200s (plus 3 orders). Its fleet of 757s offers superior range with the ability to fly up to 6.5 hours non-stop with 181 seats on each aircraft.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
Clearly the company that NPA hired to research a trademark wasn’t worth the salt they were paid and in fact I would ask for my money back for that major faux pa.
Anyone who knows how to use the USPTO website could have gotten a straight answer way in advance.
Bad advice is not nearly as bad as the leader who accepts it blindly. I hope that CEO makes better decisions going forward.
For Charles Landey, one of the 757’s NPA bought used to be with Allegiant for their Vegas-Hawaii flights. The flights were constantly cancelled due to 757 mechanical issues. Seems Allegiant couldn’t keep them fixed. the other 757 from Allegiant was in such bad shape it was scrapped. (Probably due to parts sharing with the other airframe) Allegiant finally cancelled the service and had the planes parked and put up for sale.
There was an airline named Southern Airways. It is a wonder Southern Railway did not file suit for trademark infringement on the use of “Southern” in Southern Airway.
As a little girl I thought maybe Southern Airway was part of the Southern Railway System. The airline turned out not to be associated with Southern Railway.
Southern Airway merged with another regional carrier to become Republic Airlines, Republic became part of Northwest Airlines which in turn amalgamated into Delta Airlines.
There is still a Republic “Airways”. They are a contracted carrier for several Class 1 airlines to operate United Express, Delta Express and American Eagle using less than 100 seat airframes and service smaller airports.
I’ve often wondered about the two unrelated airlines both called “Republic”.
Penelope is completely right. North Central, Southern (which I’d never heard of) and Hughes Airwest merged to become Republic. Which was absorbed into Northwest which in turn was merged into Delta. DTW Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport was Republic’s biggie and now is a biggie biggie for Delta.
Republic went out of business just in time for Northwest to take the blame for the 1980’s crash at DTW. It was a Republic plane with a Republic flight deck crew on a Republic route, many people blaming the crash on pilot error. I have my own private opinion what caused the crash but I’m not a certified air crash investigator so I’ll keep it to myself.
When we would come up with new product names they always had to go through our corporate lawyers who would do a months long search to make sure there would be no problems. Good for BNSF for standing their ground and knowing what came before as Charles said.
Whatever. An airline with four ancient Boeing 757’s to its name and 57 days into its operation. I can see why BNSF wouldn’t want any confusion when/if the start-up airline goes turtle.
Northern Pacific Railroad was merged out of existence in 1970, before half the railroad management suits in Fort Worth were born. Give the BNSF people credit for knowing what came before them.