Guys N8301J Warrior One from Southwest Airlines apparently has been repainted and had her titles removed from her nose! Why dd they do this!? Can we expect to see her titles on the nose again!? Very sad to see this!

Photo of her then: https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9098093

Photo of her now 😞: https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9214153

Thanks Alec Trahan.

4 hours ago, FLYBOYSWA2900 said:

Why dd they do this!? 

No idea as to the the reason why, but in this day and age I wouldn’t be surprised if someone or a group of people somehow found it to be offensive and lobbied to have it removed.

 

4 hours ago, FLYBOYSWA2900 said:

 Very sad to see this!

I don’t understand what’s sad about it since it just a small part of the pant job that most people probably don’t notice anyway.

I like Southwest's custom paint jobs, I also miss America West, which had custom paint jobs for our Phoenix sports teams, then they became USAirways, then American, who I worked for during 2014 on contract to help rewrite their crew scheduling software.  I also miss the PSA Smileliners, the Aircal livery, and the old Hughes Airwest "flying Banana" livery.  I used to see the Hughes Airwest F28's and DC9 fly over Napa just out of SFO when I was living in Napa in the 70's.  Another great livery was that of Transinternational (later Transamerica since the charter airline was owned by TransAmerica).  I flew TIA from JFK to Europe and back in '77, my only charter flight I ever flew on, chartered to hold 200+ crazy high school students touring Europe at that time.

I remember when the 737-700 came into Southwests fleet, you could tell them apart (before they had winglets) from the 737-300 by the orange paint on the flap pylons when they were in the air, on the plane there were obvious differences in the flap pylons between the 737-6,7,8 and the 737-300,400.  My longest flight on a 737 was a six hour, brutal flight from Baltimore to Phoenix fighting headwinds all the way, we were on a 737-700 in 2008.  The plane had just one empty seat--thankfully it was between me and a passenger on the aisle, who looked the part of a gang member.  He scared the other pax away, I nodded to him and asked if I could take the window, and he nodded back.  We enjoyed our exquisite space on that long flight to the ire of jealous passengers around us and to the amusement of the flight attendants. 

I was returning from a week long business trip visiting DC and working out of Rockville MD where I was getting job certification for the Silktest programming environment, used for software quality assurance.  I then returned to Phoenix to lead the automated testing team for my employer, who was the world's largest retail software provider at that time.  I worked for them from '07-12 and we were a wonderful team, having regular employer paid lunches and outings to various entertainment venues around Phoenix and even to an indoor skydiving venue.  We also did paintball, I was mercifully taken out early with a painless forehead shot, my colleagues had welts in their stomachs and on their backs and legs, my face mask protected me as I saw my "blood", the paint, lol, coming down my visor between my eyes.  My colleague who shot me apologized, lol.....

I took off my fatigues and a team photograph was taken of us.  Someone photoshopped the fatigues back on me for the picture which we displayed in our programming office area, on the top floor of our building.  Others were jealous of our team but we were the main revenue source, about ten of us, for the entire company which had other smaller software niches.

John

3 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

No idea as to the the reason why, but in this day and age I wouldn’t be surprised if someone or a group of people somehow found it to be offensive and lobbied to have it removed.

 

I don’t understand what’s sad about it since it just a small part of the pant job that most people probably don’t notice anyway.

Eh well for an avgeek it's sad to see another old canyon blue SWA plane go away. Someone else told me it may have offended some people.

10 hours ago, FLYBOYSWA2900 said:

Eh well for an avgeek it's sad to see another old canyon blue SWA plane go away. Someone else told me it may have offended some people.

 I’d probably consider myself an “avgeek” as well but was never one to get attached to paint jobs, winglets, split scimitars, and wing flex lol.

I guess we agree on the offensive part. Certain groups of people are becoming so hypersensitive and offend about things that they are even offended by the American flag, true story!

I hope that someday soon the world will run out of bubble-wrap and cotton wool...  Good job the 737 didn't have a 50's pin-up girl painted on the nose like an old warbird etc.. 

At least Virgin still use the flying lady Varga-style pin-up..

As a veteran of 26 years of service in the Marine Corps and Airforce and having survived three wars and watching my grand kids getting involved in one or more of our several ongoing decades long never ending wars I am getting kinda tired of warriors, heroes, and 'thank you for your service.'   Good for Southwest Airlines.

Hard to believe that one day after an anniversary of D-Day we can't do what we did then.  We defeated the enemy in a ground war across Europe in LESS THAN A YEAR!

Does anyone one even want to win our current wars?

Noel

Edited June 7, 20196 yr by birdguy

I think way too much is being made out of this even to the point of getting into the political arena.

  Who really cares if Southwest repainted an aircraft nose?  It may be their new paint scheme or it may be between paint. Perhaps they're making room for something new.

Or, it might be a corporate decision to remove all nose "art" as an economic move. Right now I'm sure only Southwest knows.

In any case, I see it as less than newsworthy.  There are far more important things to be concerned about like "why do I get CTD's with FSX?", or is X better than Y?