Have Virgin run out of paint?

Hi there!

Been looking at this excellent site for ages as a long time Virgin flyer (who never flys enough to make anything above Silver sadly). Thought it was time to register!

Here's a question though... for a while it was a regular occurance to see a VS plane get a repaint to the new scheme, but the repaint rollout seems to have stalled. Does anyone know if this is a cost saving delay, or to virgin need to wait until a plane needs taking out of service for an oil change to do it?

Best time is in line with a "D" check or "C" check (a bit like an oil change but more in depth). Have to agree that some of the aircraft look a bit tired!!!

As well as the cost of painting, consider the cost of flying all that extra weight around.
A 747 carries some 500kg of paint when freshly covered.
That's quite a lot of fuel to carry it.

Over $2.5 million a year for the fleet!

Now what's that in T10, cakestands, amenity kits ........

(250kg/sector for 750kg extra weight; 60% utilitization of 35 aircraft, 70c/kg Jet-A)

Welcome to the site MrDoob!

Being as the old paint is stripped off before painting it makes no difference, it could even be said that a nice new paint job would reduce drag....

But not much of the old paint left

Just looked at the Aircraft Database on here and I see Mustang Sally has just gone to AMS. Is this check time or paint shop? Anyone know?

I seem to recall that there are a number of places virgin send the planes to be painted. Is this one still waiting for the upper deck idiocy to be carried out? Not sure if they have to send planes away for this as well... but I KNOW someone here will be able to say

Ruby Tuesday was at AMS for a few weeks recently also, just a random piece of info for you there!