📹 Time Lapse: Repainting the Qantas A380

Watch as the Qantas A380 superjumbo is stripped and repainted in under a minute.

Australia’s national carrier, Qantas, has been giving its fleet of aircraft a facelift ahead of its Centenary celebrations in 2020, marking 100 years of service.

This was one of eight Qantas Airbus A380s to be stripped and repainted recently at the Emirates Aircraft Appearance Centre in Dubai – the largest aircraft painting facility in the world owned by an airline.

Repainting the superjumbo took 16 days, 5,500 hours and required 1,100 kg of paint to cover more than 3,000 square metres of aircraft.

Qantas aircraft are usually repainted every 10 years.

The airline’s fleet of A330-300s were also repainted in California while some 737-800s have been repainted in Singapore.

The smaller regional aircraft – including the Fokker 100s and Dash 8 Q300s and Q400s – have been repainted closer to home, at Wagga Wagga and Townsville.

Qantas aircraft are usually repainted every 10 years, but they’re given a washdown each month to remove grime and dust that builds up on the aircraft skin.