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Allegheny Schemes: which would have been the better "heritage"

DAYUM!! That is one ugly creature!
Yea, I assume the 787 will have the same problem as Airbus planes as it has lots of composites. If you've ever seen an AA A300 painted silver next to a 767 you'll see why painted silver planes just don't cut it.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=191397

US won't be able to apply that great looking silver scheme to an A319. Heck look at the Piedmont retro jet. They had to paint the bottom of the plane that horrible silver.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1053664/L/
 
I've heard that American orders new planes with a slightly different aluminum alloy that doesn't oxidize as bad - don't know if it's true or not. Whatever the reason, they keep their planes nice and polished.

That's an old photo of that A300, by the way. Here's the same airframe in polished aluminum:

N34078 on 5/30/04

I think that's Boeing grey below the stripe on the PI heritage plane - just the way PI painted them.

Jim
 
I've heard that American orders new planes with a slightly different aluminum alloy.......

Airbus Industries and Fokker didn't use clad aluminum (Al-clad) as skin for their aircraft, for as long as I can remember. The skin instead, was chemically converted. That's why you always see those fleet types painted. In fact, in order for USAIR (at the time) to have their F-100's sporting the polished skin, they had to request that clad aluminum be used for the skin panels during airframe assembly.

Back in 1989 the merger between USAIR and Piedmont created some unique situations concerning the F-28 aircraft. PIT management insisted that the F-28 could be buffed regardless of the fact that it had un-clad, treated skin. So the paint was stripped and the polishing began. And the "Silver Bullet" (A/C 107) was born....leaking rivets and all :lol:

I'll take a clean paint job over a sardine can anytime B)

Keep em flying BoeingBoy!
 

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