Galahad
Regular
Oceanic Air Lines, I believe is a generic airline used for numerous shows, not just LOST. It's just that it's always a throwaway scene in other places. In LOST, it's half the show so we remember it.
But I'd imagine that in most occurrences the airline is used for instances on A TV show where a hijack or disaster are required... because understandably no commercial airline wants to be associated in any way with the idea... however fictional, that their planes are unsafe.
At media college they taught us that you can tell instantly if a fictional plane flight is doomed to some bad turn of fate... simply by whether or not the airline is real.
Which kind of makes me wonder if BA or Air France ever sued the makers of the B movie "Concorde" because they were the only two companies to operate the plane. I have special memories of just how awful that film was... in the climactic scene, the pilot OPENS THE WINDOW IN A PRESSURIZED CABIN so that he can fire the emergency rescue FLARE GUN in a desperate bid to draw off a HEAT SEEKING MISSILE that has locked onto the Concorde after being fired at by a terrorist.:guffaw:
But back to my point... the fact that the reference to Oceanic was just on a billboard and not in any way involved in an actual flight, makes me wonder of it was a nod.