That's one of the elements which is actually real (original photo: https://www.airliners.net/photo/IndiGo/Airbus-A321-271NX/528...) - the German flag (as well as the German registration and the MSN) are apparently added over the airline's paintjob until the plane has been delivered to the customer and is allowed to use its Indian registration (which is to the right of the Indian flag over the rear passenger windows, covered with a white sticker).

Probably a big part of the curiosity this picture creates is that some of the elements that look like really bad photoshop are actually real, but others are not. This is where the surprising entertainment value is. Almost reminds me a little of that oddly-colored dress that took the internet in 2015.

They tack some stickers on their brands?

Don't they have any sense of aesthetics?

Thanks for the clarification.

It’s a temporary registration during test flights etc., so not much different than a dealer plate on a car?

Planes are painted in the first user’s livery at the factory, and they’re hardly going to repaint the entire plane between test flights and delivery.

Low cost seems like the wrong way to describe Indigo. They seem to be the safest and most reliable choice in the market at the moment (since vistara got vacuumed into AI) and have been quite pleasant the few times I’ve taken them. They just don’t have a business class at the moment.

Low-cost doesn't mean unsafe. Most (all?) the large, European low-cost airlines have excellent safety records.

Eurowings certainly doesn’t..

But yeah generally that seems to be the case. Ryanair for inspection is one of the largest airlines in the world but it never had any fatal accidents.