Why Ex-AA 767 Red Cheatline Painted Blue

N62NA · Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:43 pm

If you look at the picture closely, you can see that the red cheatline has been painted blue. Why?

superjeff · Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:56 pm

[threeid][/threeid]

N62NA wrote:

If you look at the picture closely, you can see that the red cheatline has been painted blue. Why?

The plane has been withdrawn from service and is now in storage awaiting resale or scrapping. American wants to remove their identification from the airplane so it doesn't appear to be a derelict bird in their (in this case former) livery.

aeromoe · Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:57 pm

Over the years literally hundreds of x-AA planes have had this done to them.

N62NA · Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:03 pm

superjeff wrote:
The plane has been withdrawn from service and is now in storage awaiting resale or scrapping. American wants to remove their identification from the airplane so it doesn't appear to be a derelict bird in their (in this case former) livery.

I get that, but it's not really all that effective. Does anyone NOT know this is a former AA plane? LOL.

smokeybandit · Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:07 pm

They go through that effort to de-identify the livery, but forget a pretty crucial piece? Or maybe they had to change out a rudder to get it to ferry somewhere?

TWA302 · Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:16 pm

N62NA wrote:
superjeff wrote:
The plane has been withdrawn from service and is now in storage awaiting resale or scrapping. American wants to remove their identification from the airplane so it doesn't appear to be a derelict bird in their (in this case former) livery.

I get that, but it's not really all that effective. Does anyone NOT know this is a former AA plane? LOL.

I agree with you. I get WHY they do it, since it is not their property anymore. Same with the WN 733 stored. On some, the SOUTHWEST has been covered up. Hard NOT to tell what airline they were formerly with.

Sooner787 · Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:20 pm

What has AA been doing to the jets in their new livery after retirement?

Easy to paint over the billboard title on the fuselage, but tail's hard to miss

qcpilotxf · Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:20 pm

smokeybandit wrote:
They go through that effort to de-identify the livery, but forget a pretty crucial piece? Or maybe they had to change out a rudder to get it to ferry somewhere?

Painting a rudder requires it to be re-balanced. It is much easier to leave half a logo on it than to re-balance the entire thing. AA likely paints the red bar on the plane to protect their trademark. It prevents anyone but AA to operate the plane in that livery, because some carriers might not want to paint the aircraft if it was sold.

trnswrld · Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:21 pm

Same reason you see things covered or painted over after a accident or crash. Search for pics of accidents/minor crashes, you’ll see logos and names covered or painted over.

777PHX · Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:34 pm

Sooner787 wrote:
What has AA been doing to the jets in their new livery after retirement?

Easy to paint over the billboard title on the fuselage, but tail's hard to miss

I don’t know that any of the repainted ones have been retired, save for the 767 that burnt down in ORD. My understanding is that the entire MD80 fleet wasn’t repainted and they only repainted the 757s and 767s they planned on keeping for a period of time. Although, there’s only 35 757s left in the fleet, so it’s entirely possible some of them have been retired in the new livery.

N62NA · Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:11 pm

qcpilotxf wrote:
AA likely paints the red bar on the plane to protect their trademark. It prevents anyone but AA to operate the plane in that livery, because some carriers might not want to paint the aircraft if it was sold.

That makes sense.

timf · Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:16 pm

777PHX wrote:
Sooner787 wrote:
What has AA been doing to the jets in their new livery after retirement?

Easy to paint over the billboard title on the fuselage, but tail's hard to miss

I don’t know that any of the repainted ones have been retired, save for the 767 that burnt down in ORD. My understanding is that the entire MD80 fleet wasn’t repainted and they only repainted the 757s and 767s they planned on keeping for a period of time. Although, there’s only 35 757s left in the fleet, so it’s entirely possible some of them have been retired in the new livery.

I know I've seen a photo of at least one. From what I can remember, they painted out the blue but left the red and white.

yochai · Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:26 pm

timf wrote:
777PHX wrote:
Sooner787 wrote:
What has AA been doing to the jets in their new livery after retirement?

Easy to paint over the billboard title on the fuselage, but tail's hard to miss

I know I've seen a photo of at least one. From what I can remember, they painted out the blue but left the red and white.

johns624 · Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:36 pm

N62NA wrote:

I get that, but it's not really all that effective. Does anyone NOT know this is a former AA plane? LOL.

99.999% of the public are not a.net geeks.

Polot · Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:41 pm

qcpilotxf wrote:
smokeybandit wrote:
They go through that effort to de-identify the livery, but forget a pretty crucial piece? Or maybe they had to change out a rudder to get it to ferry somewhere?

Painting a rudder requires it to be re-balanced. It is much easier to leave half a logo on it than to re-balance the entire thing. AA likely paints the red bar on the plane to protect their trademark. It prevents anyone but AA to operate the plane in that livery, because some carriers might not want to paint the aircraft if it was sold.

They are not idiots. They (and WN, and others who do the same thing) know that you can easily tell who the former owner was. That is not the point.

cosyr · Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:43 pm

I always thought that the red was painted (or decaled) over a blue primer. When AA lent one for Airport 75 it also had 2 blue stripes, thinly disguised for "Columbia Airlines". I wonder why AA would put so much more effort into their stored planes than all the other airlines that just remove logos.

Flaps · Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:52 pm

AA has been painting the red line blue at retirement for a long time. I've seen a number of 727's operated over the years with the blue stripes and just the name of the new operator added.

Florianopolis · Fri Jan 12, 2018 9:24 pm

In case you were ever curious where NASA got their space shuttle carriers . . .

scbriml · Fri Jan 12, 2018 11:15 pm

Sooner787 wrote:
What has AA been doing to the jets in their new livery after retirement?

Easy to paint over the billboard title on the fuselage, but tail's hard to miss

richierich · Fri Jan 12, 2018 11:20 pm

Are the AA planes flown to the desert with the blue stripe or is the repainting done before the aircraft's last flight?

MSPbrandon · Fri Jan 12, 2018 11:49 pm

richierich wrote:
Are the AA planes flown to the desert with the blue stripe or is the repainting done before the aircraft's last flight?

Usually it's done just after the plane arrives at the boneyard.

Cebo29 · Sat Jan 13, 2018 1:30 am

AA & AE aircraft are painted that way for their ferry flight to the desert as required by company rules...at least when I was working with them.

NWAROOSTER · Sat Jan 13, 2018 2:57 am

It is NOT that expensive to paint the red strip blue. You can mask off the area around with tape and paper from a roll and simply after wipping the red with acetone roll a coat of the correct blue paint. Then the aircraft is ready for the ferry flight to the desert. :old:

grbauc · Sat Jan 13, 2018 2:59 am

johns624 wrote:
N62NA wrote:

I get that, but it's not really all that effective. Does anyone NOT know this is a former AA plane? LOL.
99.999% of the public are not a.net geeks.

I believe you nailed it.

aeromoe · Sat Jan 13, 2018 5:00 am

Florianopolis wrote:
In case you were ever curious where NASA got their space shuttle carriers . . .

You cannot pluralize this with "space shuttle carriers". Only one is ex-American. The other is a former Japan Airlines 747SR-46.

Moe

einsteinboricua · Sat Jan 13, 2018 5:24 am

I've wondered the same thing and only one person was able to give a possible answer (that still doesn't make sense).

Folks in this forum are aware that AA repaints the red part of the cheatline blue. That's not the question: it's why. You'd think that an aircraft retired from service, if owned by a leasing company, would be painted white or bare metal to do a "reset" if its to be resold (odds are the buyer wants their own livery applied). And if owned by the company it would not spend money on a half-done job (it's gonna be a soda can, so why bother?).

And while it it true that 99.999% of the population isn't composed of airplane geeks, a great part of it travels or lives close enough to an airport or flight path and, if vigilant enough, would know how to distinguish when a plane coming in for a landing is from AA or WN or DL without looking at the titles or using a flight tracking tool.

ADent · Sat Jan 13, 2018 6:52 am

Maybe they are afraid of something like this:

BAeRJ100 · Sat Jan 13, 2018 8:49 am

ADent wrote:
Maybe they are afraid of something like this:

To be fair, in that example it appears that AS was leasing the a/c from UA (going by the caption) rather than AS being too lazy to paint an old UA plane. Hybrid liveries when an aircraft is leased between two airlines happens quite a bit. See G-BNLH/VH-NLH in hybrid BA/QF livery, and a 747 that had basic JL livery with QF titles.

Italianflyer · Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:20 am

I was under the impression it has something to do with insurance and liability. These planes, while not actively flying, are still registered with the FAA as 'stored'. If something were to happen and cause injury/death while under the custody of a 3rd party (whoever operates the boneyard) then the airline dosent want their branding associated with the incident.

That's how it was explained to me years ago.

scbriml · Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:27 am

NWAROOSTER wrote:
It is NOT that expensive to paint the red strip blue. You can mask off the area around with tape and paper from a roll and simply after wipping the red with acetone roll a coat of the correct blue paint. Then the aircraft is ready for the ferry flight to the desert.

Some of the ex-AA planes I saw at Roswell last year had the red cheatlines painted over in a very crude fashion. Maybe they ran out of masking tape?

EA CO AS · Sat Jan 13, 2018 11:10 am

TWA302 wrote:
N62NA wrote:
superjeff wrote:
The plane has been withdrawn from service and is now in storage awaiting resale or scrapping. American wants to remove their identification from the airplane so it doesn't appear to be a derelict bird in their (in this case former) livery.

I get that, but it's not really all that effective. Does anyone NOT know this is a former AA plane? LOL.

I agree with you. I get WHY they do it, since it is not their property anymore. Same with the WN 733 stored. On some, the SOUTHWEST has been covered up. Hard NOT to tell what airline they were formerly with.

WN doesn't want anyone asking about their growing focus city in Marana.

USAirKid · Sat Jan 13, 2018 12:00 pm

einsteinboricua wrote:
I've wondered the same thing and only one person was able to give a possible answer (that still doesn't make sense).

Folks in this forum are aware that AA repaints the red part of the cheatline blue. That's not the question: it's why. You'd think that an aircraft retired from service, if owned by a leasing company, would be painted white or bare metal to do a "reset" if its to be resold (odds are the buyer wants their own livery applied). And if owned by the company it would not spend money on a half-done job (it's gonna be a soda can, so why bother?).

And while it it true that 99.999% of the population isn't composed of airplane geeks, a great part of it travels or lives close enough to an airport or flight path and, if vigilant enough, would know how to distinguish when a plane coming in for a landing is from AA or WN or DL without looking at the titles or using a flight tracking tool.

It mostly comes down to cost.

A leasing company doesn't want to spend money to repaint an airplane since when they lease it to a new customer they or their customer will just have to repaint it again. Getting an airplane to bare metal does take some effort and cost as well.

AA on the other hand wants the airplane not to be associated with AA for various reasons, such as trademark protection and reputation risk, but they don't want to spend too much to remove the AA livery from the airplane, thus the repainting of the blue stripe and the removal of the AA logo from the tail, but not the rudder. (Remember, rebalancing the rudder costs money! Don't spend money on an airplane that won't be yours in a few days.)

If I were to put my money on it, I'd bet that this is trademark protection. You also see restaurants that close locations promptly remove all of their trademarked signage, or at the bare minimum paint over them with black paint. The important thing about trademarks is you have to protect them, if you don't, you're at risk of losing them. I'm sure AA's triple stripe is registered trade dress as is the logo, if you let another airline use either of them (such as by selling the aircraft to them before removing those logos) you're at risk of losing them, or at the very least you've gotten yourself a legal headache as you have to defend your trademark, which means having a lawyer write a demand letter to the new owner, then suing the new owner if they don't remove the AA logos from the airplane. Its much easier just to take care of it before you give up possession of the airplane, but to do it as cheaply as possible to keep the lawyers happy.

XAM2175 · Sat Jan 13, 2018 12:27 pm

As many other posters have put it - the aim is not to disguise the previous operator of the aircraft but to prevent them losing control of their trademarked branding. Some airlines are less concerned than others, granted, but making some attempt to remove more obvious pieces of their identity is not at all uncommon:

(interesting discovery here, for me anyway, is that the tulip on UA's battleship livery was a decal rather than painted-on - as evidenced by it simply being peeled off!

)

Of course there are other circumstances where airlines do have a greater interest in protecting their brand than normal, a well-known one being when CI605 went off the end of the runway at Kai Tak in 1993. In that case the vertical stabiliser was removed (with dynamite, of all things!) at the behest of the airport authority as it interfered with the ILS signal for runway 31, but CI were very fast to paint over their name and eventually also the fuselage cheatlines in order to lessen their exposure before they could have the aircraft removed and scrapped.

TWA302 · Sat Jan 13, 2018 3:25 pm

EA CO AS wrote:
TWA302 wrote:
N62NA wrote:

I get that, but it's not really all that effective. Does anyone NOT know this is a former AA plane? LOL.

I agree with you. I get WHY they do it, since it is not their property anymore. Same with the WN 733 stored. On some, the SOUTHWEST has been covered up. Hard NOT to tell what airline they were formerly with.

WN doesn't want anyone asking about their growing focus city in Marana.

I know, right? Who would have thought that WN would be starting a new "focus city" there!

F27500 · Sat Jan 13, 2018 3:59 pm

Nooo... that's the plane they close for the new 'Airport' movie ! Remember "Columbia Airlines" and "the Stevens Corp" 747s in those movies ... still totally in AA livery with the red stripe changed to blue ... ?

"Airport 2018" on the way!

travaz · Sat Jan 13, 2018 5:07 pm

I get lawyers :duck:

and the desire of the Airline to protect thier branding but if someone were to see a jet take off from DFW and land in GYR how would they even know that the aircraft is being retired?

The first picture of the 763 is going to become an Amazon Prime plane.

sunking737 · Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:22 pm

Back when NWA took over the original Republic, NWA had the RC maintenance guys use paint rollers to cover the tail red. I even saw them paint over the aqua/blue with white paint. They wanted to KILL OFF the DUCK ASAP.

global2 · Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:33 pm

F27500 wrote:
Nooo... that's the plane they close for the new 'Airport' movie ! Remember "Columbia Airlines" and "the Stevens Corp" 747s in those movies ... still totally in AA livery with the red stripe changed to blue ... ?

"Airport 2018" on the way!

I was going to say that the plane is being prepped for sale to Columbia Airlines! :lol:

kjeld0d · Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:44 pm

Florianopolis wrote:
In case you were ever curious where NASA got their space shuttle carriers . . .

The one case where the original titles should have stayed on. 747 LuxuryLiner Shuttle cAArrier

bluejuice · Sat Jan 13, 2018 8:18 pm

As aviation enthusiasts, we have much more knowledge when it comes to planes, liveries, other areas in fine detail. I am always surprised at what people here can glean from the most subtle pieces of information. That being said, the general public likely has no clue who owned a plane as soon as the name is covered up. As a self selected group, it may feel like everyone is able to identify the airline splashed with a poorly done paint job. I have a friend who is into knitting as much as we are into aviation. She can identify dozens of types of stitches, materials, and other subtle details related to the hobby. To me, it just looks like a quilt, sweater, scarf, etc. It's very much like her saying, "It's plainly obvious a stockinette stitch was used. How can someone think otherwise?"

Pilawt · Sat Jan 13, 2018 8:19 pm

richierich wrote:
Are the AA planes flown to the desert with the blue stripe or is the repainting done before the aircraft's last flight?

This is N937UW arriving at Phoenix Goodyear Airport on November 7, 2017, on its last flight (from KPHX, 20 miles away, as AA9651). It looks like it could have just come from the paint shop.

Today, barely two months later, it is parked at KGYR, its "American" billboard and logo painted over, and all the blue paint removed from the vertical fin.

F27500 · Sat Jan 13, 2018 11:52 pm

Amazing to see so many parked airliners in the newest liveries of their companies. Seems like a real waste of $$ to paint a plane they know is going to be scrapped in not too long a time.

notaxonrotax · Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:19 am

bluejuice wrote:
As aviation enthusiasts, we have much more knowledge when it comes to planes, liveries, other areas in fine detail. I am always surprised at what people here can glean from the most subtle pieces of information. That being said, the general public likely has no clue who owned a plane as soon as the name is covered up. As a self selected group, it may feel like everyone is able to identify the airline splashed with a poorly done paint job. I have a friend who is into knitting as much as we are into aviation. She can identify dozens of types of stitches, materials, and other subtle details related to the hobby. To me, it just looks like a quilt, sweater, scarf, etc. It's very much like her saying, "It's plainly obvious a stockinette stitch was used. How can someone think otherwise?"

The fairest point that I have seen made on-line today.
We often forget that!

F27500 wrote:
Amazing to see so many parked airliners in the newest liveries of their companies. Seems like a real waste of $$ to paint a plane they know is going to be scrapped in not too long a time.

Yeah, quite amazing indeed.

No Tax On Rotax

kc135topboom · Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:32 am

MSPbrandon wrote:
richierich wrote:
Are the AA planes flown to the desert with the blue stripe or is the repainting done before the aircraft's last flight?

Usually it's done just after the plane arrives at the boneyard.

Before I retired from DFW (i retired in 2009), AA airplanes that were being retired had the red cheat line over painted with blue before they departed for the boneyard. They only did this for retired airplanes. AA airplanes that were scrapped at DFW (1 F-100 and 1 DC-10-30) they did not repaint the cheat line.

drdisque · Sun Jan 14, 2018 4:25 am

In 2003 AA donated a few of their retired 727's to Ariana Afghan Airlines and they in fact flew them with the two blue stripes for about a year before they were repainted in the airline's full pre-war livery (in the meantime the blue on the nose started to flake off and the red showed through).

MSPbrandon · Sun Jan 14, 2018 5:16 am

kc135topboom wrote:
MSPbrandon wrote:
richierich wrote:
Are the AA planes flown to the desert with the blue stripe or is the repainting done before the aircraft's last flight?

Usually it's done just after the plane arrives at the boneyard.

Before I retired from DFW (i retired in 2009), AA airplanes that were being retired had the red cheat line over painted with blue before they departed for the boneyard. They only did this for retired airplanes. AA airplanes that were scrapped at DFW (1 F-100 and 1 DC-10-30) they did not repaint the cheat line.

I stand corrected, thanks

cougar15 · Sun Jan 14, 2018 6:13 am

Looking at the Ariana above, I remember one (722), also with the blue cheatline instead of red, all this being just after 911. The aircraft in question went ´missing´ somewhere in Africa (I think it was Nigeria if memory serves me right) , caused a lot of bad press & fear at the time, so I expect that they were glad they had at least changed the cheatline from red to blue due to all the negative press coverage of the event. sadly I don't recall if it was ever ´found´ again.

Edit: just found it on Wikipedia, at least in German, it was N844AA and went missing in Angola in 2002 , CIA & FBI tried to find it.

timf · Mon Jan 15, 2018 2:22 pm

F27500 wrote:
Amazing to see so many parked airliners in the newest liveries of their companies. Seems like a real waste of $$ to paint a plane they know is going to be scrapped in not too long a time.

The ex-US Airways planes had to be repainted anyway, and that particular 757 flew for 2 1/2 years in the new colors before being retired so it's not a complete waste.

N14AZ · Mon Jan 15, 2018 2:25 pm

Flaps wrote:
AA has been painting the red line blue at retirement for a long time. I've seen a number of 727's operated over the years with the blue stripes and just the name of the new operator added.

Yapp, saw my last one in 2011 in CAI -

Centrafrique Air Express Boeing 727-223Adv., TL-ADY by N14AZ

Yflyer · Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:59 pm

scbriml wrote:
Some of the ex-AA planes I saw at Roswell last year had the red cheatlines painted over in a very crude fashion. Maybe they ran out of masking tape?

I would guess that since the planes aren't likely to fly again anyway it's probably not worth the effort to mask everything off and try to make it look nice. Much easier to just send a guy up with a can of blue paint and a roller.

Who is online

Popular Searches On Airliners.net