New US Airways colors

[Fly_Chick]

I wonder if they went from blue to white for economic reasons.

Aside from cost of paint, I wonder if weight weighs into the decision on the paint scheme. Red is the heaviest pigment color (Virgin Airways only painting the nascelles red). I wonder what, or if at all, the color scheme contributed to the economics?

 

[Cactus73]

That wasn't a planned thing. The paint shop forgot to put some sort of coating under the paint, so they had to make them bare metal to be able to check for corrosion or something like that.

True.

The contracted paint shops screwed up the planes when they removed the old paint from the aircraft. There is an AD for lap seals on these planes and it is easier to comply with the AD with the bare metal finish than if there is paint on the plane, so they left 10 of them in the bare metal.

Our old -200's had this same problem and it was one of the reasons they were pushing to retire them so quickly because the lap seal inspection is rather detailed and expensive when you have all the paint on the plane that we did.

Show's that outsourcing mx isn't always cheaper.