New Aviationtag × Icelandair Edition Preserves Iconic Hekla Aurora

Original material from Icelandair’s Boeing 757 TF-FIU becomes limited Aviationtags, preserving the colors and history of its famous Northern Lights livery.

COLOGNE, GERMANY, September 8, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Green Northern Lights above dark mountains, a deep blue fuselage, and a cabin where the aurora danced even on the clearest days: Hekla Aurora was impossible to mistake for any other aircraft. Following the Boeing 757’s retirement in fall 2025, Aviationtag is bringing back pieces of its original fuselage as a limited edition created in collaboration with Icelandair.

The aircraft’s story began long before its distinctive paint scheme. Registered TF-FIU, the Boeing 757 took its first flight in April 1994. It initially flew for Iberia and, for a time, Air Europa before joining the Icelandair Group in 2004. Its transformation into an aviation icon came a decade later.

In late 2014, a team of specialist artists in Norwich, England, took on a project that was anything but routine. Working from photographic references, they recreated the Northern Lights across the aircraft’s fuselage using elaborate airbrushing techniques. Section by section, they carefully matched the flowing colors and added an Icelandic winter landscape below. Shades of green, turquoise, blue, and deep midnight tones blended into one another. Inside, a cus-tom LED lighting system brought the aurora experience into the cabin.

Even the name carried a distinctly Icelandic meaning. Hekla is both a traditional Icelandic girl’s name and the name of a well-known volcano, while Aurora refers to the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights.

Icelandair officially introduced the aircraft in February 2015 with a flight from London to Reykjavík. Hekla Aurora went on to fly routes between Europe, Iceland, and North America, be-coming one of Icelandair’s most recognizable aircraft—and, for many aviation enthusiasts, one of the most beautiful in the world.

Its flying career also included some unexpected assignments. In October 2023, the aircraft brought 126 Icelandic citizens home from the Middle East via Jordan. Just days later, it stepped in for an unavailable regional aircraft on the short domestic route between Reykjavík and Akureyri. For a Boeing 757 usually found crossing the Atlantic, it was a rather unusual day at work.

On October 12, 2025, Icelandair marked Hekla Aurora’s retirement with a scenic farewell flight over Iceland. Around 140 passengers joined the occasion, some traveling from abroad specifically for the flight. The aircraft was subsequently transferred to Lleida, Spain.

That is where the Aviationtag team found it in July 2026. In temperatures exceeding 40°C, the Cologne-based team personally removed sections of the original aircraft skin. The famous Northern Lights livery, still intact when TF-FIU retired, had been preserved.

“An aircraft like Hekla Aurora doesn’t come along every day. Its livery, its history, and the con-nection people feel to it are simply extraordinary. We knew we wanted to make sure a piece of it would live on,” says Tobias Richter, CEO of Aviationtag.

The recovered material is now being handcrafted into limited-edition Aviationtags at the company’s Cologne workshop. Depending on which part of the fuselage they come from, each piece carries different colors from the original livery. An aircraft that brought the Northern Lights around the world now lives on in a form its admirers can keep.

The complete colorful edition is available at aviationtag.com/icelandair.

Tobias Richter
Aviationtag by bordbar design GmbH
+494921170905050 ext.
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Aviationtag x Icelandair - The Story behind Hekla Aurora