Aircraft re-sprays

[Craig Lindsay]

When another carrier takes over an aircraft, when they do the new paint job do they sand blast it,rub it down with wet and dry or just go over the old paint scheme

[Paul C.]

They can do both. Strip the paint (which they usually do) or paint over the old paint (which is often sanded and then primed before several coats of paint). Sometimes they don't even repaint an aircraft at all and do a simple livery conversion (Jetstar A330-200 VH-EBC is a good example) where they paint over or remove the old titles. Titles are often sprayed over the base colour like white for example, smaller titles are actually stickers

[Philip Argy]

It's a typo I know but re-spay kind of fits unless you think the old girls could never be neutered.

[Rod Sloan]

I thought a spaying was only required once ??

[NickN]

Would have thought in these times that if an aircraft needed a complete livery change removing the existing paint altogether would provide a weight benefit. Extra layers of paint add extra weight.

[Paul C.]

Originally Posted by NickN

Would have thought in these times that if an aircraft needed a complete livery change removing the existing paint altogether would provide a weight benefit. Extra layers of paint add extra weight.

An aircraft is usually stripped after two paint jobs because of weight. But it is usually reccomended that they strip all the paint off an aircraft to keep the weight down. Then you have simple livery conversions where most of the aircraft still retains its previous paint job.

Qantaslink Q400 VH-QOH is a good example of an aircraft that has had new paint added over its original. The white paint at the rear is original but the pink was added over the top of the white up the front. A single coat of light pink gradients away into then another coat of darker pink gradients into the lighter pink.

[NickN]

Someone needs to give a few pointers to the folks that paint the Atlas aircraft! I think they forgot something in the process, the aircraft look like they have leprosy

[Raymond Rowe]

I once saw an Air Niugini aircraft that was with TAA and it had 26 coats of paint on it.Never in is life with TAA had it had a paint strip.When it was paint stripped the original TAA paint scheme was on the bottom.It took 5 days of solid paint stripper to get it to eventually come off.

[NickN]

Geez 26 coats, any ideas on how much weight that would equate to?

[Raymond Rowe]

A fair amount.We were very surprised when we saw that many.Usually they paint strip after about 3-4 repaints.We got to the point where every major overhaul the aircraft were stripped back to the bare metal.