Retro airline liveries

Where was the first Air Canada photo taken? Looks like it might be Toronto given the hotel.

I remember when American Airlines went with the polished/exposed aluminum exterior. It was suppose to save something like 500 pounds of paint weight per plane and increase fuel efficiency.

 

It probably did but a bare finish is vulnerable to corrosion if the aluminum clad coating on the skin is scratched or gouged. It would require constant inspections if the operator is of a responsible nature.

 

I returned from the Gulf War on this one (March 1991).
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Not quite... .American never did paint their planes from inception.
As Bob says, they save some weight, but there's a lot more maintenance if they're not painted.
American did say that they saved millions by not painting... advertising???

Finally in the mid-teens, a few years ago, they started painting.
Now they paint them silver to look as if they aren't painted.
They need to be painted anyway with all the carbon fiber now.

 

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Looking good.

I miss the smoke and noise from the turbojets.

 

Calgary for sure.

 

The only one of these I've actually seen is the "TCA" Airbus. American also had a 757 in the retro scheme a few years ago.

 

Anybody remember the "Easter Basket" airline?
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Everybody remembers Pan Am. Here is a picture I took several years with their livery on a railroad box car of all places. I did a double take when I first saw it and had to get a picture. Someone has apparently bought the old name and logo.

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Ozark airlines at STL




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AH HA!! The secret is out. Pan Am is still in operation but in a secretive way. That is their newest out-sized very heavy cargo freighter. It has microscopic wings that retract when it is on the ground. And then at night it is positioned on a long stretch of straight track and after a long thundering run, they lift off for a night flight to their destination and land before dawn on another long straight stretch of track. You think that you have heard a thunderstorm some nights but it is really the Pan Am freight.

 

To explain the rail car:

Pan American Railway used to be Maine Central Railroad. It was purchased by Guilford Transportation Industries (1981), who later bought Pan Am Airways (1998) from bankruptcy. They later renamed MEC to Pan Am Railways (2006).

http://www.panamrailways.com/who-we-are/

 

Sort of like the nose art on the B-29 "Bockscar"!

 

Never heard of Braniff? Significant international airline from the late '40s to the mid '80s. They didn't call them 'Easter egg' planes, they called them "Flying Colors".
Even put down a deposit on the 'upcoming' Boeing SST...

 

When we were working on them in Renton, they acquired fruit and vegetable names instead of the airplanes that they were, they were The Carrot, The Cucumber, The Banana, etc. Not a good way to establish an airplane identity when each airplane looked like it came from somewhere else.

 

And their orange 747 was nicknamed the 'Giant Pumpkin'. ("Peanuts" was in it's heyday then.)

They called it the "end of the plain plane"...


Also the Concorde flights in the US were all Braniff flights, by agreement w/ the Brits and French. The Braniff name was applied vinyl when they flew here.
They were limited to 0.99 mach over the US, so they weren't much faster than a conventional jet.

 

A few more airline color schemes and names that no longer grace to sky's.
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Skies?
America West is doing just fine... they own American Airlines...

Prior to that, they took over US Air.

When they take over another airline, they use that name due to greater public recognition, so, changed the name to US Air then to American Airlines.

 

Not sure about this one but I'm thinking water injection.

 

You're correct about the water injection but even without it, the older engines were very inefficient and left a thick black trail behind them.The keel beam box on the 707's and KC-135 held something like 254 gallons of ADI, distilled water, and every bit was used on take off