At first, you see that the paint is noticeably weathered but still beautiful in its own right. In fact, I contend that the 12 year-old paint job, as-is, was arguably more attractive than a brand-new paint job with most of the larger airlines who sport “Eurowhite” liveries (can you tell that I do not like bland liveries?)
BONUS: Lost Airline Livery: An Orange Donbassaero Airbus A320
The paint scheme that Sun Country planes sport is what many AvGeeks would refer to as a “jelly bean” livery; i.e. at the very minimum, a brightly-colored plane. There is however some dissent in the community that argues a true “jelly bean” requires that each plane be slightly different, for example the historic liveries of Braniff seen below.
Braniff British Aircraft Corporation BAC One-Elevens in Jelly Bean Livery. Photo by Kemon01 / Flickr CC
The similarity of Sun Country’s livery to that of Braniff might not be by mistake. According to Sun Country’s website the airline was founded in 1982 by a group of former Braniff pilots and flight attendants.
Within the aviation enthusiast community (more specifically among plane spotters), there is a passion for colorful and diverse liveries. We’re thankful to Sun Country for doing their part to brighten the skies.
For more about what goes down at Jet Midwest, check out the introductory post I wrote about them in July.
Thanks for posting this. As a ex SY employee I miss working at SY and being around those planes. They do have one of the best corporate colors around.
Cool that you had time on the ground with these beauties. Was it with this livery or one of the earlier ones?
Glad you were able to catch this one Rob 🙂
David
Nice video! Sun Country is a classy little airline making its niche in a major’s hub (NWA considered MSP one of it’s strategic assets). From afar, it is easy to mistake Sun Country with SWA.
Kinda of looked like the AW 757 painted in Phoenix Suns livery at first.
I believe the B.W.I.A (British West Indies Airways) had the best livery than any other aircraft (“Jelly Bean” category)
This version of the Sun Country livery has been with Sun Country since 2001 when the first 737 was delivered to Sun Country. When the comment was made that Sun Country colors looks like Southwest, the correct statement is Southwest colors look like Sun Country. Southwest changed their colors later from brown, tan and orange to their current colors that resemble Sun Country. No bashing here just FYI.
Should the aircraft be re-weighed after a new paint job?