Quote:
Originally Posted by D-AIHC
Why is the cheatline different at the nose? Was there an era when CO had this on their aircraft or is this just a one-off special cheatline on that particular aircraft? Thanks!
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Here's a -200 with the same cheatline:
According the the photo caption, it was an experimental cheatline. Glad it wasn't adapted, as I think it looks strange.
The CO meatball scheme was very interesting and diverse, with many small variations and one-offs existing over the years, and of course, a ton of hybrid schemes from all the acquisitions and mergers during the Lorenzo days.
The original "meatball" scheme (formally known as the "Contrails" livery) had a black tail logo, small fuselage titles, flag and a red meatball surrounding the titles, wide cheatline, reg. in white inside the bottom cheatline stripe, black anti-glare paint beneath the front cockpit windows, and no bare-metal belly.
Shortly thereafter, the black paint beneath the cockpit windows was done away with and a bare-metal underside became standard.
The livery was revised in the mid '80s when Frank Lorenzo took over. Changes include: red meatball, larger titles with no surrounding flag or meatball, narrower top (gold) and bottom (orange) cheatline stripes, reg. in red bellow cheatline.
However, often an aircraft was left in the 'old' livery (small titles with meatball and flag, wide cheatline, etc.) and just had it's tail logo painted red.
Then there were the hybrids...
Frontier:
Texas International:
PEOPLExpress:
PSA:
CO had a very interesting fleet back then!
EDIT: Note the revised narrower cheatline of the red-logo scheme is only applicable for narrowbodies.