PICTURES: Russian tradition inspires Aeroflot's 90th anniversary Superjet livery

Aeroflot, the Russian flag carrier, is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year and, as it usually happens in this type of occasions, it is doing something special to mark the date!

In Aeroflot's case, a Sukhoi Superjet SSJ 100 aircraft has been painted with a special livery celebrating the airline's 90 years of service.

What makes this livery special is that it came out of a public contest, "Paint your plane", open to the members of the public (or to be more exact, members of the Russian public since, for legal reasons, you needed to be a citizen of the Russian Federation to participate, hence the main reason this contest was not widely publicized overseas).

As you might imagine, the prospect of designing an airplane excited people's imagination and creativity...According to Aeroflot sources, 7,000 design proposals were received during the time the contest was on. Then, after an online vote, 10finalists were shortlisted, and, at the second stage, a jury voted for the top three designs (that you can see here!).

Finally, the winner turned out to be this Khokhloma-style livery (inspired on Russian traditional decorative art of the XVII century) submitted by Alexander Sosnovsky (Саша Сосновский).

It is his design you can see now painted on Aeroflot's Superjet...