airplane livery

Alaska Airlines’ paint the plane contest

Alaska Airlines is having a Paint the Plane contest.

The airline has decided to paint a 737 with a Hawaiian theme and asked Hawaii schoolchildren to submit their ideas. These three designs have been chosen as finalists and Hawaiian residents are being asked to vote for a winner. The winning design will get painted on a plane and the winning artist will get a$ $5,000 scholarship and a trip for four to any Alaska Airlines destination.

Here are the finalists:

Sophia Cleek’s design

Izabella Hamilton’s design

Each of these designs looks pretty snazzy. If you’re a resident of Hawaii you can vote for your favorite here. The rest of us will just have to wait and see which design wins and wait to see the newly painted plane flying by.
Voting ends December 18, 2012. The winner will be announced January 10, 2013.

World’s largest salmon lands in Anchorage

This is just plane fun.

On Thursday, Alaska Airlines unveiled the world’s largest salmon: a 91,000 pound, 129-foot long fish-themed Boeing 737-800 at a ceremony in Anchorage.

Alaska Airlines unveiled the world’s largest salmon: the Salmon-Thirty-Salmon II

The new “Salmon-Thirty-Salmon II” is almost identical to an earlier version of the paint scheme the airline used on a 737-400 in 2005. (That plane was re-painted with the carrier’s signature Eskimo livery last year.) This new design is about nine feet longer than the original one and features fish scales on the winglets and a salmon pink-colored Alaska script across the fuselage.

The design was produced in partnership with ASMI, which promotes wild, natural and sustainable Alaska seafood.

Here’s some of the trivia Alaska Airlines has shared about the Salmon-Thirty-Salmon II and a fun video of the plane getting painted.

• The 129-foot-long Boeing 737-800 has a wingspan of 117 feet and a cruising speed of 530 mph.
• Mylar paint was used to create an iridescent sparkle over the nearly 3,500 fish scales & to make the painting 3-D.
• More than 90 percent of the fuselage was airbrushed with 21 unique colors to create the lifelike king salmon.
• A crew of eight worked around the clock for 27 days at Associated Painters Inc. in Oklahoma City to paint the plane.
• Mark Boyle, a Seattle-based wildlife artist, created this design, the design for the first Salmon-Thirty-Salmon plane and a dozen other special paint themes for Alaska Airlines, including the Spirit of Disneyland I and II.

(Photos & video courtesy of Alaska Airlines)