American Airlines new logo. Time to update your fleets boys.

Boy! That is a nice change. AA has been in the old livery since I was in Junior High. !968?! It is about time and way over due. Thanks for the update. I hope that they get to implement it before merging with US Air.

Lee

I still like polished aluminum airplanes!

Don Stauffer

I still like polished aluminum airplanes!

Me too, as long as they are polished. American's aircraft always seem a bit grubby to me.

It's kinda hard to polish an airbus, so I think this is the reason they changed the livery.

I don't know, it looks kind of ugly to me. Not that the old livery was much better.

+1 Don.

Took this shot a few days after New Years.  I can only spot a little grubbiness on the tail.

I agree.  Of all the airlines that had bare aluminum as part of their finish, I think AA planes looked the best.  They seemed to take reasonable care of them.  From what I have heard, the upkeep was the reason most airlines painted most of the surface, even though the paint adds weight.

The paint on a B-17 weighed almost three hundred pounds. That is one reason they went to bare metal later in the war. That saved weight was beneficial to speed, payload and fuel consumption to some small degree. Plus, it freed up ground support personnel to other purposes. The same goes for airliners.

It is up close that the grubbiness of the bare metal finishes are most readily apparent, like when you are boarding. At a distance, they look OK.

The new AA scheme looks too generic.

As noted above, the new livery came about because most of the surface is no longer aluminum.

I personally don't like it at all. It lacks a timeless quality that will doom it to being changed in the next decade, no doubt. Helvetica is still a classic font. I think running the copy over the windows is strange looking.

The previous identity had a good run though. 1967.

Even that one was a bit of a mash up. Massimo Vignelli who created the 1967 AA, and was a teacher of mine, proposed to drop the eagle from the logo. Mass dispute arose, supposedly the pilots threatened to strike, and the previous designer, Loewy, added in the stylized eagle between the A's.

I always thought that the excuse for the bare metal to save weight was hooey. I think the Air Force adopted it in order to simplify things and because airfield attacks became non-existent.

But if you ever looked at an AA DC-10, the thing was so big, and sourced from so many plants, that the paneling never was a consistent color.

It'll be interesting to see how AA handles licensing it's use for hobbies. my guess is that they'll be pretty fierce about it.

I like it.  I wouldn't mind it a bit more colorful on the sides it is rather bland but the tail looks great.  I bet that'll be a PITA to do.  Looks nice though and I wouldn't mind having one on my shelf.

Just finished a AA DC-3.  Did a polished aluminum Alclad finish.  The way I remember it (and photos back me up- in the DC-3 days AA kept their planes pretty clean and polished.  Of course, line boys were pretty cheap in those days :-)