N121UA - United's Star Alliance Livery 747-400
 

Sure looks nice, repainted from the battleship grey. ^

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1505652/L/

Credit to Ben Wang for the photo.

First B747 Sporting Star Alliance Livery
Posted March 24, 2009



Our first B747 to wear Star Alliance colors (joining one B767 and one B777) left the paint shop this weekend, and made its first revenue flight since repainting, as UA895 from ORD to HKG on Sunday.
As for our United livery, we have repainted 181 of the 362 airplanes that will comprise our fleet once the B737 retirement program is completed.

That includes 42 of 56 A320s that were Ted aircraft, with the remaining planes scheduled to be completed this summer, says Steve Hastings, manager-Aircraft Appearance.

Nineteen B747s have been repainted in the new livery, with the remaining seven B747s to be completed by September.

We continue to closely monitor and, when necessary, take steps to refinish the exteriors of our fleet, Steve says. Line Maintenance, Airframe Maintenance and our vendors are working together to improve the appearance of our planes

I flew on this bird today! UA901 FRA-SFO 3/29/09. Enjoyed 15B on the upper deck.

You're in the pic then! Very cool.

Anyone know the age of this bird?
 

How old is this plane? Any new(er) 747's in the fleet?

Yeah, we were looking out the window on approach too. I wonder if we could enlarge the photo enough to see anyone in the window?

Y'know, I saw the plane in HKG on 3/24 at gate 63 and didn't even think about it :p.

...which relates to a rotation question I was actually thinking about while sitting on this bird (N121UA) on Friday night.

There is a week or two each year where Daylight Savings Time has changed in the US, but not yet in Europe. During these weeks UA895 operates an hour earlier on the HKG-SIN leg. It also used to operate an hour earlier return in the morning but flight status doesn't currently show that happening.

Anyway, I figured the only possible reason it could be operating an hour earlier was if it was swapping into and out of Europe where there is an effective "time zone difference" for just this couple of weeks. The 777 from NRT doesn't run any earlier during this time.

So, at least sometimes, it looks like the aircraft that runs SFO-HKG-SIN, then turns SIN-HKG-SFO-FRA-SFO. I wonder if it runs that loop consistently? I guess it would make the most sense from a utilisation perspective.

Back on topic, it's a nice looking bird and I did wonder whether I'd ever seen a UA Star 747 before (which obviously I hadn't since it didn't exist)

Since the press release said it was running ORD-HKG, I'm guessing the plane doesn't do one route loop exclusively.

On an unrelated note, seems like the new paint job has a new cabin in the inside. ^

But why keep the blue engines?

I think that makes it look cheap.. or at least silly.

So that if they have to swap parts around between different planes you don't end up with a mismatched engine cowl.

And.... I think it is another way to identify the actual carrier. Several other *A carriers do this.

They did - just on another Star carrier, Lufthansa. :D I flew it SFO - FRA.

With this UA bird, unfortunately, cool star livery on the outside, same crappy, tired airplane (at least in Y) on the inside.

Wow...half done after 7 years.

Yes, the new C seats were great on this 11 hour flight. I actually slept for a good portion of it and still had plenty of time to enjoy the AVOD system.

It matches the UA livery. The other 777 and 767 painted the same way as well. In fact, other *A livery planes also let the engine and winglets kept the original colors