Why ✈︎ is not always black
The airplane ✈︎ (U+2708, named AIRPLANE) is one of the original Dingbats from Unicode 1.1. In a text font it is a solid black silhouette that takes the color of the words around it. When emoji arrived, the same character also got a colorful emoji look.
So one code point now has two presentations: text style and emoji style. Phones and many apps choose the emoji on their own, which is why a ✈︎ that looked black when you copied it can show up in color after you paste it. There is no separate "black airplane" character; the black plane is ✈︎ shown in text style.
How to keep the airplane black
Unicode has two invisible variation selectors for this. U+FE0E right after ✈︎ asks for the text style, and U+FE0F asks for the emoji style. On this site, set Symbol style to Text and the copy button adds U+FE0E for you, so the plane you paste stays flat.
In HTML, write ✈︎. In CSS, browsers that support it accept font-variant-emoji: text, which asks for the text look. A few apps ignore the selector and always draw the emoji; in that case, use one of the always-flat planes below.
Planes that are always flat
🛧 up-pointing airplane, 🛪 northeast-pointing airplane, 🛦 up-pointing military airplane and 🛨 up-pointing small airplane were added in Unicode 7.0 without emoji versions. They always render in your text color, but fewer fonts include them; if you see a box, go back to ✈︎ with the Text style.
Black planes suit minimal bios, printed itineraries, travel blog logos and anything printed in one ink color. Pair them with flat arrows like ➝, or see the colorful planes and travel icons on the airplane symbol page and more arrows on the arrow symbol page.