Aircraft Paint and Construction

For a long time now, airlines outside of the U.S. have been putting goofy or wacky paint jobs on their planes. In the trade they are called "logo jets." Sometimes it's just the "livery" itself that is striking, like this Belgian airline Jetairfly.


Other times the airline will apply a "specialty" scheme such as this 747 belonging to Japan's All Nippon Airways.


U.S. airlines have always been very conservative. Oh, there were the pastel fuselages on Braniff's jets back in the 1970's. But only recently have other airlines in this country picked up on the trend. Along with Frontier and Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines has been a leader in this regard. Not long ago they commissioned a 737 to be built with a paint scheme that honored my home state of Florida.

Ever wonder what goes into the construction of an aircraft? I have. We've all seen videos of automobile assembly lines. But are airplanes built the same way? Well, yes and no.

Southwest Airlines recently put up a video of one of their 737s being built. It is not detailed, of course, and it's a highly sped-up, time-lapse kind of thing. But it's interesting nonetheless.



Kind of like putting a (big) model airplane together, no? It is interesting to see that so much of the big plane is made by hand - few robots here!

Kudos to SWA for the video.