Air New Zealand goes for a new look, with the national fern mark

Air New Zealand, one of the most marketing savvy airlines, is going in for a new look for its plane: it will now feature the iconic official New Zealand Fern Mark. This will be a silver fern on its aircraft on an all black or black and white color scheme, as the first two photos show above.

This new look will be rolled out in stages from later this year. It will be painted on to its 103 aircraft starting later this year and take 18 months to roll out across the fleet. Its "koru" logo stays on the tail but airline's historic teal color will disappear.

For plane aficionados, if this new design looks familiar, that because Air NZ has gone for a fern design before, when it sponsored the national rugby team All Blacks for the world cup in 2011 and rolled out an all black themed aircraft.

This comes as the airline also announced a tie up with Tourism New Zealand to undertake joint marketing activity to promote the destination to key international markets (and here we thought it always had a deal there). Both of the orgs will invest more than $10 million over the next 12 months to promote NZ in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, North America, the UK and Europe.