Fleet Repaint

Seems to be taking ages to paint the fleet. Only one of the A346 have been painted, G-VSUN is still in old colours along with half the 747s (including the refits) and don't even get me started with G-VFAB!

Why is it taking so long to paint the aircraft? Surely with the A330s in the fleet now (most have overlapped with departing 600s) the remaining fleet could have been bought upto date with the most recent livery.

Virgin aircraft have not been in a unified livery for years now and it'd be nice to see a uniformed presence at LHR rather that the current mismatch liveries and logos!

Anyone got any updates?

Painting is required at regular cycle times and as these come up they do go in for a repaint - painting outside of the cycle time is expensive and really not necessary. Yes it'd be nice to see a consistent brand at LHR, oh and V-FAB I guess they must like the birthday colours!

Seem to remember that when the current livery was rolled out it was announced that the entire fleet would be done in 2 years. Although they had problems with the paint in the mean time, which is why VSXY and VKSS have a different shade of red. So I guess this time frame is now out the window.

By the time the entire fleet is in the livery, no doubt there will be another one around!

I've done a little work and there are about 22 planes in the fleet with either the Red Wrapped Livery or the Silver Dream Machine livery left. The remaining planes have the newer Billboard Metallic or in the case of VKSS/SXY have Billboard Solid.

So around half way there but as Slinky mentioned, its expensive and usually done when it is a requirement rather than force them all through as quickly as possible.

I believe the time frame was around half of the fleet in the new livery after 2 years, so things are on track.. Don't forget that from next year the A346's will be starting tp leave the fleet to be replaced with B787's, so it only makes sense to repaint them as and when the normal cycle comes up.