At long last, I finally captured American Airlines' newest livery.

On January 17, 2013, American announced that it was changing its planes' livery. Before then, American had been the only major U.S. airline to leave most of its aircraft surfaces unpainted. This was because C. R. Smith hated painted aircraft, and refused to use any liveries that involved painting the entire plane. Robert "Bob" Crandall later justified the distinctive natural metal finish by noting that less paint reduced the aircraft's weight, thus saving on fuel costs. The new livery does not allow for the polished aluminum surface that the planes historically displayed.

In January 2013, American launched a new rebranding and marketing campaign dubbed, "A New American". In addition to a new logo, American Airlines introduced a new and modern livery for all aircraft in the fleet. The airline calls the new livery and branding "a clean and modern update" and a testament to American's willingness to become a more modern, vibrant, and sophisticated airline. The current design features an abstract American flag on the tail, along with a silver-painted fuselage, as a throw-back to the old livery. Doug Parker, the incoming CEO indicated that the new livery could be short-lived, stating that "maybe we need to do something slightly different than that ... The only reason this is an issue now is because they just did it right in the middle, which kind of makes it confusing, so that gives us an opportunity, actually, to decide if we are going to do something different because we have so many airplanes to paint".

I wonder if the MD-80s of American Airlines will be painted.

Oh, and the aircraft is a Boeing 737-800ER.

(7 May 2013, Las Vegas)