PPG Aerospace Goes For Gold With British Airways’ Olympics Jet

PPG Industries’ aerospace coatings group created custom paint colors for British Airways’ dove livery, which is being used on nine Airbus A319 aircraft to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

PPG Aerospace coatings specialists worked with livery artist Pascal Anson to supply Desothaner HS/CA 8000 series topcoats in gold, light grey and white. A two-step gold mica created outlines of feathers, which were accented in white and painted over a light grey fuselage to represent the body and wings of the dove. Gold on the cockpit created the dove’s beak, and gold on the tail created the British Airways Chatham Dockyard Union flag design. Desothaner HS/CA 8000/B900A clear topcoat provided a final protective coating.

“All the colors used for the aircraft were bespoke,” says Alex Reid, PPG Aerospace account manager at the North Europe application support center based at the PPG Shildon plant in Northern England.

Anson visited the PPG Shildon coatings manufacturing plant to select colors. “He wanted to design his own gold,” Reid said. “The plane had to be light grey to make it look like a dove, so together we designed a grey and a special gold mica with a unique base color to achieve the desired effect.”

British Airways made the paint masks.

“They have their own graphics shop, so everything was produced in-house,” Reid said. “There was only one drawing of how to paint the plane.”

As British Airways uses PPG’s selectively strippable coatings system on its Airbus fleet, Reid added, the repainting process was simplified. With this system, the topcoat and intermediate coat are designed to be easily removed, and the primer is left intact. The aircraft is washed, and the intermediate coat and topcoat are reapplied. The system typically saves about a day repainting this type of aircraft.

British Airways is the biggest user of PPG’s selectively strippable coatings system for Airbus aircraft, Reid said.

The topcoats for the gold mica were produced at the PPG Aerospace plant at Gonfreville, France, to British Airways’ specification, while the grey and white topcoats were mixed at Shildon.

According to David Barnes, British Airways operations manager for external appearance, PPG “offered excellent technical support during the aircraft painting process.”

“British Airways has valued the professionalism and integrity of PPG over many years,” Barnes said. “Their support on The Dove project went that ‘extra mile.’ PPG extended friendly hospitality towards the artist, Pascal Anson, when they invited him to their Shildon factory to create a unique gold color for his Dove design. … It has been a great pleasure to work with PPG on this project to achieve the highly successful launch of The Dove aircraft.”

Paul Day, PPG Aerospace technical service support, was on hand at British Airways’ paint hangar at London’s Heathrow Airport throughout the repainting of the first airplane, which was unveiled live on British television in April.

PPG Aerospace is the aerospace products and services business of PPG Industries. PPG Aerospace – PRC-DeSoto is the leading global producer of aerospace sealants, coatings, and packaging and application systems. PPG Aerospace – Transparencies is the world’s largest supplier of aircraft windshields, windows and canopies.