Paintless Liveries
 

I just was looking at the livery on the JAL B747-4F's and saw they had elected to go with a "Paintless Livery"
I was wondering if anyone could give any info on the benefits an organisation can expect to derive from not having a painted livery and whether or not the Vertical Stab. / other markings are painted or some form of special decal.
Cheers!
;) - s.71

that may add a few hundreds kg to the payload.
Northwest (freight fleet) is doing the same thing too.

CX has recently done a study on how to reduce fuel bills because of the high cost of fuel at the moment, one of the things to be implemented is that the freighters when next going on a major check will have paint removed and basically have a bare fuselage except for the brushwing.

There is a document on how much it is estimated this will save on fuel (trouble is I can't find it) but over a number of years it is quite substantial.

Just a point of thought. Is "paintless" down to weightsaving which will lead to Fuel saving?

As an example, I understand that the A380 basic paint scheme uses a whopping 700kg of paint for the basic model. The stretched A380 -900 will use approx 900kg. Add to the basic paintscheme any fancy airline requirements and it could push the paint weight beyond 1000kg.

Thanks.

Talk Wrench