As with many other naval terms,
flagship has crossed over into general usage, where it means the most important or leading member of a group, as in the
flagship station of a broadcast network. The word can be used as a noun or an adjective describing the most prominent or highly touted product, brand, location, or service offered by a company. Derivations include the "flagship brand" or "flagship product" of a
manufacturing company, "flagship store" of a
retail chain, or "flagship service" of a hospitality or transportation concern. The term "flagship" may have specific applications: •
Auto companies may have a flagship in the form of their leading or highest-priced car. •
Electronics companies may have a series of products considered to be their flagship, usually consisting of one or two products that are updated periodically. For example, the
Samsung Galaxy S series consists of several flagship smartphones that are released on a yearly basis. • In
rail transport, a "flagship service" is either the fastest or most luxurious.
Colleges and universities in the United States Most states in the United States provide public university education through one or more
university systems, with each system having multiple campuses located throughout the state. The phrase
flagship institution or
flagship university may be applied to an individual school or campus within each state system. The
College Board, for example, defines flagship universities as the first to be established as well as the most research-intensive public universities. These schools are often
land-grant research universities. According to
Robert M. Berdahl, then-chancellor of the
University of California, Berkeley, the phrase "flagship" came into existence in the 1950s when the
Morrill Act schools were joined by newer institutions built in a wave of
post-war expansion of state university systems. Berdahl notes further that because flagships are generally the oldest schools within a system, they are often the largest and best financed and are perceived as elite relative to non-flagship state schools. Additionally, state universities often self-designate themselves as flagships. Higher education agencies, research journals, and other organizations also use the term, though their lists of flagship universities can differ greatly. One list of 50 flagship universities (one per state) is employed by the Higher Education Coordinating Board, the College Board, and many other state and federal educational and governmental authorities for a variety of purposes including tuition and rate comparisons, research studies and public policy analyses. Despite its ubiquity, this list of 50 flagships is not the only state-by-state examination of flagships. In a 2010 article, Standard & Poor's created its own list of flagship universities, noting that each state had typically one or two institutions with flagship characteristics. The Education Sector, an education policy organization, used a different list of 51 flagship universities in an August 2011 study of college debt. Several states had multiple universities categorized as flagships due to "less of a clear distinction between a single flagship and other public universities" in those states. Additionally, several states were not included in the study due to insufficient comparative data. In February 2012, Idaho's State Board of Education made a controversial decision to strike the word "flagship" from the
University of Idaho's mission statement. The Board's President Richard Westerberg explained that this revision was made as part of the board's many changes made to multiple Idaho universities' mission statements in an effort to ensure all statements were consistent and collegial in nature rather than comparative or competitive.
Retailing 's
10-story flagship store on
Fifth Avenue in
New York City Flagship stores are core stores for
brand name retailers, larger than their standard outlets and stocking greater inventory, often found in prominent shopping districts such as
Fifth Avenue in New York,
Oxford Street in
London, or
Ginza district in
Tokyo.
Broadcasting A flagship station is the principal station of a
radio or
television broadcast network. It can be the station that produces the largest amount of material for the network, or the station in the parent company's home city, or both. The term dates back to the mid twentieth century years of broadcasting when headquarters stations produced programs for their networks. For example, the flagship stations of the
ABC,
NBC and
CBS television and radio networks are their
owned and operated outlets in
New York City. Likewise,
public television's
WNET served as primary member station for
National Educational Television (NET), a forerunner to the US
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). In sports broadcasting, the "flagship" is a team's primary station in their home market, which produces game broadcasts and feeds them to
affiliates. For example,
WGN was the flagship station of the
Chicago Cubs baseball team, which has an extensive
Cubs radio network spanning several states.
Automobiles The term flagship is also used to describe an automaker's top (i.e., largest/most expensive/most prestigious) vehicle. Modern examples include the
Mercedes-Benz S-Class,
BMW 7 series,
Toyota Century,
Hongqi L5, and
Land Rover's
Range Rover.
Airlines American Airlines obtained copyright to the term "Flagship" on 3 May 1937, per the Catalog of Copyright Entries. As of 20 December 2019 as stated in a legal document, this includes "the marks "Flagship", "Flagship Lounge" and "Flagship Suite" (the "Flagship Marks")—to describe premium air travel services for first and business class passengers since the 1930s and 1940s."
Delta Air Lines also uses/used the word "Flagship" to describe its top lines, as pointed out by AA and being argued legally in December 2019 and into 2020.
Conservation Within conservation biology, the term
flagship species refers to a species or taxon that is a symbol or rallying point to catalyze conservation actions. ==See also==