Up-Pointing Small Airplane is a proposed emoji concept that surfaced in community discussions during the mid-2010s, when directional or orientation-specific variants of existing travel symbols were being explored. It was talked about as a variant of the existing Small Airplane emoji, with the aircraft intentionally shown nose-up to convey ascent, takeoff, or a climb. Despite occasional mentions in proposal lists and mockups, this idea was never approved as an official Unicode emoji. The consensus in Unicode discussions generally discouraged encoding directional variants when the base emoji and text combinations could already express the idea.
Fans imagined this emoji as a way to say โon the way up,โ โtaking off,โ or โweโre launching,โ making it useful for travel plans, career or project momentum, stock market optimism, and aviation chat. It would have resonated with pilots, flight students, and aerospace enthusiasts who wanted to distinguish active ascent from the more generic airplane or the specific departure/arrival symbols. Ultimately, the concept overlapped heavily with the existing Small Airplane (often drawn angled upward by vendors) and Airplane Departure, and users could approximate the meaning with combinations like Small Airplane plus Up Arrow. This redundancy likely contributed to its non-approval.
If it had been realized in Apple/iOS style, the design would likely show a small singleโengine propeller plane in threeโquarter view, angled toward the upper right at roughly a 30โ45ยฐ pitch, with a white fuselage and blue or orange accents, a modest cockpit window, and simplified shading. Concept art shared online typically echoed a Cessna-like light aircraft, sometimes with subtle motion lines to suggest lift. Other platform interpretations might have opted for red or gray trim, but no official glyph was ever produced. As with many orientation-specific concepts from that era, the Up-Pointing Small Airplane remained a niche idea rather than a standardized character.
Disqus Leave a comment!
Emoji History The emoji code/ image log of changes.
This emoji was one of the "suggested emojis" the Unicode group unveiled in June 2014 [article], however, it has been, and still is, up to the companies who support emoji in their operating systems to provide not only images but also an algorithm to replace the emoji code into the emoji image.
