I know when AA retires an aircraft, beyond removing the titles and logo decals, they paint the red stripe blue. Is this just to remove their branding all together? Painting the red stripe blue I mean?
Yes, I believe it’s so that someone can’t take a shot of the storage facility and use it in the news to try to make them look bad.
Of note, when they gave several 727’s to Ariana Afghan in 2002 or 2003 Ariana operated them in that scheme with Ariana titles added for quite awhile.
Didn’t one of the 747-100s that NASA took still have the AA stripes for a while.
Yes. I believe one of them still has that c/s.
Of all the Nasa 747 images I can find showing registration markings, they’re all N905NA. It has been repainted…
There was a pic recently on A.net with an A300 heading out to her final resting place…should have gone and got the link but I’m feeling lazy right now. 
That was the photo that sparked the question 
I’ve seen the double blue stripes scheme many times but never really thought about why until I was looking through the latest photos over there.
Was that the test Shuttle?
As far as I can tell, the picture shows the test shuttle (Enterprise). I believe that it is the only shuttle to have been flown off of the Shuttle Carrier. It was never intended for space flight, and only flew down to earth after releasing from the 747. Enterprise is now very nicely preserved at the Udvar Hazy museum at Dulles Airport.
Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise-its five year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life, and new civilizations. To boldy go where no man has gone before…
[quote=“dcgjedde”]
As far as I can tell, the picture shows the test shuttle (Enterprise). I believe that it is the only shuttle to have been flown off of the Shuttle Carrier. It was never intended for space flight, and only flew down to earth after releasing from the 747…[/quote]
Must have been one HELL of an operation; I wonder how they got the shuttle off the back of the 747 without it hitting anything?
[quote=“Pkm188”]
Must have been one HELL of an operation; I wonder how they got the shuttle off the back of the 747 without it hitting anything?
The 747 dived when it released the shuttle. I’ll see if I can find the exact procedure.
[quote=“damiross”]
The 747 dived when it released the shuttle. I’ll see if I can find the exact procedure.
If the 747 dove wouldn’t the tail strike the underside of the shuttle? Maybe the shuttle climbed and the 747 dove very shallow?
Try these:
Wow, I can’t beleive 31 years have passed since that first glide test. That was such a big deal at the time. Holy crap! my Dad was right again, life really is short…
Enterprise was almost made spaceflight equiped to replace the Space Shuttle Challenger but it was cheaper to just build Endeavour which was the first spacecraft named partly after another spacecraft, Apollo 15’s CM Endeavour.
Wasn’t Endeavour essentially built from spare parts?
correct… challenger (ov-99) started it’s life as a test article, too…
what kind of plane is that under AA’s space shuttle??
Meek, you are reading the thread right?
“Didn’t one of the 747-100s that NASA took still have AA stripes for a while”
“…after releasing from the 747.”
And so on.
In short, it’s a NASA plane that they didn’t bother to repaint all of, with a test shuttle piggy-backing.
silentnite - I think he meant to type the word plane instead of place. Look at his shuttle in the picture.