Let us paint a picture for you. It's 4:30 AM on a cold, frosty December morning at Seattle International Airport. You, your significant other, and your one to three kids are in tow. You're walking through one of the airplane terminals at this ungodly hour, and everybody in the group is tired and cranky.
That is until they turn the corner and see the airplane they'll be flying to Disneyland. The Alaska Airlines Pixar-themed Special Edition Boeing 737-800 is an engineering marvel of modern aerospace paint technology. That's besides all of its accolades as one of the highest revenue-generating medium-sized jet airliners on the planet.
It takes a team of dozens of workers and millions of dollars worth of specialty equipment to create one of the largest, most vibrant, and colorful art pieces ever embued onto an airplane. Meanwhile, our hypothetical family of four's malaise turns to unparalleled joy as the likeness of the kid's favorite Disney-Pixar characters lights up the soul in a way few other things can.
They board their coach class seats, and Toy Story's Rex the Tyrannosaurus meets their gaze, painted onto the inside of the fuselage. The kid's minds are glued on if they'll be able to score one of those limited edition dragon-shaped popcorn buckets before the park runs out. Inbetween YouTube videos on their iPads, of course. Meanwhile, the parents are worried about needing to dip into the kid's college fund to subsidize an unpaid vacation in the age of inflation.
The kids are satisfied for the moment, as they haven't yet realized that each of their iPads will lose its Internet signal once they get to cruising altitude. Even so, the jet's twin turbofan engines hoist the jet and its passengers in tow up to a cruising altitude above 30,000 feet (9,144 meters). Little do they know just how much of a spectacular feat of engineering the one-of-a-kind Pixar Pier at Disneyland-themed paint job was to accomplish.
Photo: Alaska Airlines
Before it could take to the air in this form, however, a herculean amount of labor was needed. The jet was towed to its maintenance hangar in Seattle, where an airliner-sized paint booth was waiting for its arrival. Most body shop paint booths are no larger than a two-car garage. But this airliner paint booth could easily double as a basketball arena with enough drive, including space for selling popcorn and nachos.
Just like with custom cars, any good airplane's paint job begins with a solid primer foundation. Dozens of gallons of aerospace-grade primer paint must be applied to the airframe's bare aluminum skin before a layer of masking paper was placed overtop the primer to serve as the basis for the character portraits slated to be painted.
In a timelapse uploaded to their YouTube page, we can see how Buzz, Woody, Jessie, and all their Toy Story buddies are masterfully painted onto the airframe using nothing but electric forklifts, cherry pickers, and an artist's hand. It's a level of hands-on craftsmanship that the average Joe wouldn't expect from such a huge airliner.
It took 24 painstaking days from start to finish to get the 737-800's bare skin into a state that makes the theme-park junkie within us all ready to break out the Visa and book a ticket. But that's not even half of the story. A scarcely believable 50 gallons of aerospace-grade paint in 44 different primary colors and custom compound shades were required to get the iconic and instantly recognizable look ready to advertise Disneyland's Pixar Pier Attraction at Disney California's Adventure Park.
Photo: Alaska Airlines
A cursory search of the jet's tail number N537AS reveals the jet in question was manufactured in the year 2012, with an FAA certification issuing date in February of that year. Its CFM International 56-7B27 jet engines generate 27,300 lbs (121 kN) of thrust each. They're the most powerful variant of the turbofan engine selected for modern 737-800 models and also its rival, the Airbus A320 family.
The type is one of the most prolific jet airliners anywhere in the world, with 10,000 examples produced in different variants since 1967. But of all the hum-drum, melancholy routes that 737s usually get stuck with, the Pixar Pier themed 737's inaugural from Seattle International Airport to a layover in San Francisco and a final destination or Orange County, California, must be pretty darn sweet.
Switching back to our vacationing family of four now. A short flight filled with kicking and screaming toddlers withdrawing from iPad screen time in both first and second was drowned out by little bottles of Kahlua at seven in the morning. The family is greeted by the Pixar Pier 737 pulling up to the gate to their awaiting bus to Anaheim.
The place where the bulk of their multi-thousand dollar vacation is due to be spent, of course. Meanwhile, the 737 prepares to make the flight all over again for another family full of tablet/smartphone-addicted children and their doting, overworked millennial parents.
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