Originally Posted by
windowontheAside
Don't they have to be stripped back to the metal periodically for safety inspections? AA used to claim that their polished metal livery saved them a fortune in maintenance and fuel costs.
Not as far as I'm aware. I've seen plenty of longhaulers and single aisle Airbus undergoing heavy checks in Cardiff, Glasgow and Madrid but none were paint stripped. In fact neither BAMG or BAMC have paint facilities (but for the odd panel job) and, as far as that is concerned, they at best dry-polish the fuselage if memory doesn't deceive me.
What is quite interesting, though, is that
Trent900's skin relic is showing some red paint underneath the white. I seem to understand it's from the tail, based on what he wrote earlier - in that case, on closer inspection, it could well be a piece of a previous livery because the tail isn't always stripped bare due to weighting reasons that have always escaped my little brain's understanding. The question would be which livery it'd be.