American Airlines Completes Fleet Repainting a Year Ahead of Schedule

American Airlines Completes Fleet Repainting a Year Ahead of Schedule

AirlineGeeks is reporting that American Airlines has completed the repainting of it’s entire fleet of aircraft, and it has completed the task a year ahead of schedule.

The airline’s initial goal was to complete 96 percent of the fleet’s repainting by December of 2017, with the remaining part of the fleet being completed in December 2018.  However, the airline completed it’s goal a year ahead of schedule (if only their flights operated the same way).

By 2015, American Airlines had completed nearly half of its fleet, two years after it’s merger with US Airways.  In November 2016, American announced that all 299 US Airways planes had been painted with the livery.

AirlineGeeks reports:

Troy Sokolowski, senior manager for American’s vendor Management, helped oversee the massive paint project and was proud to see the project finish up. He said, “You take a good breath and say, ‘wow, finally, it’s over.’”

Sokolowski was one of the many American employees involved in this project. Coordinating the project involved many departments including base maintenance, fleet engineering, maintenance repair organization (MRO) operations, marketing, and purchasing. Additionally, the airline often sent employees on-site at the paint vendors to ensure everything was right for the airline.

Good job, American, on getting the fleet painted ahead of schedule.  Now if they could match that care and commitment to service of their fleet and match it with their “Going for great” slogan, which in my view, has been merely a catchy phrase that in practice has not come anywhere near fruition.  But hey, the service on board, on the telephone, on Twitter, and in the airport may be terrible, but at least you can fly on a plane with the new livery!