Thanks to poor weather conditions in the Paine Field area, the return of SWISS’ first 777 from the paint shop in Portland was delayed by a day. In fact, the plane was forced to land at Boeing Field in Seattle thanks to how quickly weather deteriorated at PAE. It would spend the night at BFI before flying to Paine the next morning.
Here is a shot from the first moments after the aircraft arrived in Paine Field on January 5. A big thanks to Jennifer Schuld for sharing her photo. Jen is an active spotter at Paine Field and you can see her other great photos on twitter (@JenSchuld). She literally has new content almost every day!
Courtesy: Jennifer Schuld
Nevertheless, she is finally at Paine where she will undergo final preparations ahead of being handed over to SWISS in the coming weeks.
However, the paint and graphics work is not quite finished. To mark the occasion, SWISS will be applying a unique graphic to the fuselage that will make it even ‘more’ SWISS.
The graphic was designed to showcase the SWISS heritage and will be a film that will be applied to the fuselage once the aircraft arrives in Zurich. This livery will be unique to this 777.
Over the coming months, SWISS will be introducing their 777s primarily on domestic European routes which will allow for their crews to train and become acclimated with the aircraft before they start flying their long haul routes.
These fuselage artworks are getting increasingly complex and inventive. Quite a technological leap in the decal-making industry! As for the “shakedown domestic” schedule, a 777 on GVA-ZRH-GVA certainly rivals those Tokyo-Osaka-Tokyo 747 runs of days of yore.
The film will be applied in LX hangars in ZRH 😉