[Jeff Higgins]

In my dark and distant past, I actually did this for the Boeing Company, for about six months back in the early '80's. It's one of the things that inspired me to finish up school...

Anyway, the process steps in the video go something like this (remember, it's been over 25 years...):

Mask off all fiberglass, plexiglass, glass, or other composite surfaces. Radome, windshields, passenger windows, A/C (wing to body) fairing, all control surfaces, and wings.

Spray a chemical or dry ice type stripper. This is the first spraying operation you see. They show it lifting the paint on the vertical fin.

Rinse the stripping agent off. This is what appears to be the second spraying operation. You can see the "NWA" logo rinse right off of the side of the airplane.

Mask the upper fuselage and empenage, then paint the main color on the vertical fin and rudder.

Mask the vertical fin and rudder, then surface prep and prime the fuselage. Surface prep includes a solvent scrubbing followed by a water scrubbing, with Scotchbrite pads on orbital sanders. The primer is, in fact, a zinc chromate.

Shoot the base color.

Mask for detail painting. This includes the logo on the vertical fin, the logo on the sides, passenger and emergency door outlines, and all maintanence, hazard, or warning stencils. You'll see most of the airplane masked, with the crew removing masking only in the specific areas getting the detail painting. You will notice they uncover and recover specific areas as they go. The vertical fin looks as though it is getting painted several times only because of the number of colors in Delta's logo.

We had three days to prep and paint a new 747, with three crews a day on it for around the clock coverage. We had five days for a full livery change as shown in the video. We actually had far better access than these guys have, with our stackers hanging from the ceiling of the hanger. Each side of the airplane has three stackers to cover the fuselage, and one to cover the empenage, for a total of eight covering the whole airplane.

While this was, um, "interesting" work, the chemicals in use back then - particularly the strippers - were something I never want to be exposed to again. Like a scene right out of The Toxic Avenger, we used to fill up five gallon plastic buckets with 50/50 MEK/tolulene and waddle accross the hanger floor with one swinging in each hand, slopping that stuff all over the floor. Guys were using that stuff with no gloves, no respirators, no protection at all. Yikes. I couldn't take it for long.