Airlink unveils its rugby-supporting green machine E190 airliner
South Africa’s largest regional and domestic airline, Airlink, has unveiled one of its Embraer E190 jetliners repainted in a one-off celebratory all-green livery. The aircraft, ZS-YAE, was repainted in the airline’s paintshop at Polokwane’s Gateway International Airport. (The other two specially painted Airlink aircraft have overall black liveries.)
“The aircraft is one of three sporting our Airline Skybucks customer loyalty programme paint schemes,” explained Airlink CEO de Villiers Engelbrecht. “Its unveiling coincides with Airlink being named the Official Domestic Airline for the forthcoming Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry 2026 tournament where we will fly the New Zealand and South African teams and personnel between their matches.”
The official logo of the tournament was also painted on both sides of ZS-YAE’s fuselage. The aircraft would be operated on the carrier’s main trunk routes, both domestically and regionally.
The Airlink paint shop has an area of 96 m by 46 m and can paint up to 13 aircraft a year. The airline repaints aircraft every five to seven years.
The job was executed by a specially-qualified six-strong team of technicians who employed electrostatic equipment. The fuselage they painted was 36.24 m long and had a diameter of 3.01 m; the tail was 10.57 m tall. They used three coats: one primer, and two green coats. Each coat weighed about 35 kg, excluding hardener and thinners. Each coat was about 55 to 75 microns in thickness, which was less than the thickness of a human hair. And each coat took about two hours to dry.
Some 60 l of paint was used for the job. The paint was certified for use on aircraft and imported from a company in the Netherlands, AERO Technique by name. The total time taken for the job, including stripping and disposing of the previous livery, and preparing the aircraft for its new paint job, was 29 days.
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