BAeuro

I am just wondering why BA haven’t painted the nose cone on some frames even though they had their ‘nose job’ about a year ago. I understand in the short term why it’s easier to just stick a white one on but some seem to be permanently stuck with them now.

G-TTNC and G-EUOB have been sporting a white nose for about a year now while G-EUYV and G-MEDM are recent casualties.

I’m assuming this kind of small maintenance could be done at LHR?

lcylocal

No inside knowledge by might be because BA closed its paint bay at LHR so will need to wait now.

Schwann

In the scheme of things I'd imagine it's rather low on the priority list so would get done or replaced at the next exam it has, in order to minimise aircraft downtime.

13901

AFAIK some capacity to paint on composites and small items - e.g. nose cones or engine cowlings - have been retained. I suspect it's got something to do with getting hold of a nose cone, or the downtime to paint the radome and then putting it back on?

rapidex

Take the radome off to repaint, ground the aircraft for 15 hours. Where's the sense in that?

BAeuro

I thought that kind of job could be done overnight but that was just my guess.

If an aircraft arrives in about 21:00 and departs at 8:00 it could easily go over to maintenance for approx 9 hours.

Also, January is a quiet month and at times aircraft have been parked up for a few days with nothing to do. Would have been a good opportunity but as you guys say it’s not a high priority.

rapidex

They may also be loan units and not belong to BA. They would need to go back in the original condition when returned by BA.

gw76

and a fully painted 'spare' rotated and available as needed. They often don't seem a perfect colour or alignment match anyway.

skipness1E

Nosecones are swapped between the fleet frequently from an engineering perspective, it’s easy. From a branding perspective, it looks rubbish. A good % of the A320 fleet were painted a different shade of white and/or have the blue at a different level. The B744/B777 fleet also have the mismatched shades of white. That could be fixed by sourcing the right colour from a retiring aircraft but that involves man hours and “cost cutting is now in BA’s DNA” as someone ex Accenture once said.
The worst example is the BOAC B744 retrojet which now has a spanking off-white nose. It looks terrible!

champair79

G-TTNC had a white nose cone within a few weeks of entering service and has remained the same ever since. It’s not really acceptable I agree. G-EUOB paint-wise is in a terrible condition and providing she isn’t retired soon, should be close to next in line to be painted.

G-MEDM was painted in Ostrava last week and looks splendid.

I flew G-EUYV yesterday. From memory, she’s ‘normal’ now.

As others have said, I believe BA can do touch-ups to small parts (cowlings, nose cones etc) but man hours is probably the issue. There is always a bigger or more important job to do.

I have often wondered why if they can’t paint them why they don’t do a swap and put the white nose cone on an aircraft that’s due for painting. Again, man hours and a lack of joined up thinking probably play a role here. You’re right that there have been quite a few aircraft parked up in January so this would’ve been a good opportunity to get the fleet looking good externally.

champ

Globaliser

On a similar theme, at the end of last year I was on G-STBL, and noticed that the forward part of the number 1 nacelle/fan cowling wasn't blue but a fairly light shade of grey. A quick image search on airliners.net suggests that this has been in place for at least the whole of the second half of the year - https://www.airliners.net/photo/Brit...6-ER/5635043/L - possibly as a result of a mishap at IAH. For all I know, it may still be there.

flatlander

Does BA really want to have a fleet that looks like the cars my peers had when I was a student, with either worn paintwork all round or a bonnet, door, bumper, etc, in a different colour because someone had sourced the part from a scrapyard to scrape their rustbucket through the MOT just once more time? I know keeping the aircraft in flying condition is more important than appearance, but the fleet is starting to look pretty scraggy at times.

BAeuro

I remember thinking that it was a shame a new NEO ended up with a dodgy nose, and assumed it would be rectified swiftly. But alas, it was never fixed and won’t be heading to the paint shop for a long while.

G-EUOB does indeed look tired but the A319 retirement plan changes so much I don’t know when it will actually go.

chucko

Deng Xiaoping might have said, "It doesn't matter if it's a white nose cone or a black nose cone. So long as it protects the radar, it is a good nose cone."