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Comment by tomfakes | Hacker News Reader

They painted the plane too - so they clearly put some money into this in addition to what was needed for a test flight

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/t31/1...

Boeing a sponsor of the Seahawks, and the aircraft is a freighter owned by Boeing and used for testing (equipment? possibly used to haul parts?). The livery doesn't appear to be just for the Superbowl, so it's probably a permanent marketing/PR piece for their local city.

http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2014-01-29-Boeing-747-8-Freighte...

I'm sure the (many, recent) tax breaks pay for it...

The tax breaks the Legislature just passed for Boeing are apparently the largest state-tax subsidy deal for a private company in American history.

Local pride, as thet say.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022245449_westneat13...

Well, it's a hat tip to their brethren who put all the public funds into the seahawks stadium...

Bribe, kickback, gift, hat tip, patronage. All a matter of perspective I suppose.

> The livery doesn't appear to be just for the Superbowl

It's new. There's some youtube footage of the same aircraft doing test flights a few months back. Plain white, and weathered, fuselage and tail.

I meant that the livery is evergreen, and isn't "Good luck at Super Bowl XLVIII!" They can fly it for years and it won't be dated.

> Plain white, and weathered

Maybe it needed a paint job anyway.

This was the first ever flight of this aircraft, so that is not the same airplane in those videos.

OK but the photograph was taken from another plane, which had no other reason to be in the air.

Well, a plane has to have paint. Another case of "Might as well spell something out while you're at it."

I wonder how much that really costs, though. The plane has to be painted one way or another, so you're paying for the design (which doesn't seem too involved here, since it's borrowing elements from elsewhere) and whatever extra work is involved with painting a more elaborate pattern.

Still, not entirely zero, you're right. I imagine the extra cost for the paint job came out of the marketing budget. Probably well worth it.

Planes do not have to be painted. Bare aluminum is pretty corrosion resistant. Many airlines strip most of the paint to save weight.

While bare aluminum saves weight, the TCO is higher:

"While the lighter weight of a polished airplane saves fuel costs [...] this savings is more than offset by the higher cost of washing, polishing, and painting a polished fuselage throughout its service life. The net operating cost of polished airplanes, calculated as a percentage of the total operating cost, is between 0.06 percent and 0.30 percent more than the total operating cost of fully painted airplanes."

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_05/texton...

Pure Al does form a passive layer, but apparently not 2024 Al alloy as used on aircraft (trades more strength for corrosion susceptibility).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_aluminium_alloy

Some corrosion pics still at http://connielinguscorrosion.blogspot.com/ .

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