Originally Posted by
Adam Smith
Planes only need to be painted about every 7 years. Painting them is expensive - the paint job costs money, but so does taking the plane out of service to have it done - and as airlines have gotten smarter about their finances, they've decided that the brand value of re-painting a fleet quickly is substantially less than the cost of doing so. So instead of rushing everything to the paint shop, they paint the new liveries only when they need to re-paint the planes.
You will see that UA and LH still have plenty of aircraft in their old liveries, having launched new ones around the same time AC did, and they will probably both substantially exceed the 7(ish)-year timeframes they publicized when they announced the new paint jobs.
The old colour scheme was pleasant and distinctive. The new one manages to be both hideous and boring.
This is certainly more a lack of effort in painting than it is following any sort of maintenance program. Fin 738 (C-FIVM) was delivered in May of 2008 and is still flying around with its original coat of paint (the red titles have been replaced). As is 739, 740, 741 and 742. 10 years is long, but 16 is excessive…
Paint priority (at least when I was there) was given to any aircraft that was showing delamination. Paint would be inspected on maintenance visits, and even if it was faded and looked awful, if it wasn’t delaminated, it wasn’t prioritized.
As a point of reference, the previous (ice blue) livery debuted in October 2004. The final aircraft in the white (1993 livery) was Fin 403, and it was repainted in October of 2010. So there seemed to be a lot more motivation back then. Granted they were also fighting off CCAA protection, and trying to spin off every possible asset (Aveos, Aeroplan, ACGHS) so it wasn’t exactly the “good old days.”