In 1963, Alisarda, a privately-owned airline, was established on the initiative of the Ishmaelite prince Aga Khan with the aim of encouraging the development of tourism on the Costa Smeralda, in north-eastern Sardinia, until then only served by sea. The first logo consisted of capital letters, underlined by red and blue rectangles with a yellow middle line.

In 1973, with the opening of the new Olbia-Costa Smeralda airport, the company decided to change the logo; a green symbol with the letter “A” and the vertical stabilizer design while the black logo was composed in capitalized Akzidenz Grotesk.

In 1991, as part of a repositioning on the international market, the name was changed to “Meridiana”, a name that evoked the measurement of time and trajectories on the globe; the logo reproduced the stylization of a sundial and the logo was composed with a font derived from the Garamond.

In 2005 “Air Italy” was founded for short, medium and long haul “charter” and “scheduled” air transport; the logo featured a phoenix, a symbol of Air Europe’s rebirth from the ashes, cited for hiring many of its former employees.

In 2006 Meridiana acquired the controlling share of the Eurofly airline, starting an integration process which ended in 2010 with the birth of “Meridiana Fly”; therefore the red word “fly” was added to the 1991 logotype. In 2013 “Air Italy” was acquired by “Meridiana Fly” and, therefore, its logo will bear the signs of the group’s identity: the red symbol of the sundial and the graced logo composed with the institutional lettering.

But only in 2018 did the two companies fully merge to create the new “Airitaly”, thanks to the intervention of the Qatar Airways company. The new name “Airitaly”, with no space between the two words, will guide the company towards growth towards new domestic, medium and long-range destinations for the major locations in the world. The new visual identity, designed by the Superunion agency, includes the uppercase logo in a burgundy red, a visual reference to Qatar Airways; then the letter “Y” which, with a mint green stroke, reproduces a bird in flight. The livery reproduces, on the rear, the symbol in a very distinctive texture among others in the air transport sector.