A lot of the Grey 777’s looked good still up to the merger. Some of the later built ones like 222-229UA looked fine. A wash made a big difference too for some planes. The paint on the remaining Airbus’ was mostly in fine shape but the problem was that most had mismatched engine cowlings due to painting most of the spares in rising blue. A lot of 319s went to the paint shop in the 6-8 months before the merger and got fresh paint. From 2006-2009, only 801-804 had Rising Blue.

Some of the 757s looked rough and many got Rising Blue paint in 2009-2010 and likely would’ve had them all done by the end of that year if Jeff didn’t come along to stop it. I remember a UA employee posted a memo from John Tahoe in fall 2009 saying they were Speeding up the paint lines, and they did.

Mesa painted some CR7s in early 2004 from HP to UAX. These probably are the last planes to get new Battleship paint. N501MJ-514MJ. Some would’ve been in the paint shop or just gotten out when UA unveiled Rising Blue in Feb 2004.