PPG coatings add character to Cathay Pacific special livery

Coatings by PPG Industries’ aerospace business create the colourful characters and ‘The Spirit of Hong Kong’ livery on Cathay Pacific Airways’ Boeing 777-300ER aeroplane painted to support the ‘Hong Kong: Our Home’ campaign of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.

TRUE SPIRIT OF THE CITY
The livery features a dark green fuselage with silhouettes of the 110 winners in an online contest calling on Hong Kong people to submit creative entries that illustrate the true spirit of the city.
Eight custom colours of Desothane HS/CA 8800 buffable topcoat by PPG Aerospace were applied over Desoprime HS/CA 7700 primer and waterborne chromate-free DesoGel EAP-12 conversion coating and adhesion promoter pretreatment. The high-solids formulations of the topcoat and primer result in a lower percentage of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
"With an aircraft as visible as ‘The Spirit of Hong Kong,’ it was important for Cathay Pacific to have confidence that it would be a showpiece as it flies around the world,” said Kent Wong, Technical Services Manager, Cathay Pacific. "Having worked closely with PPG Aerospace, we knew we could count on their products to perform and on their people to provide the exceptional service we needed.”
"PPG Aerospace was honoured to help Cathay Pacific create the special livery,” said Terence Cheng, PPG Coatings Segment Manager, Hong Kong. "Cathay Pacific has long been a PPG Aerospace coatings customer and PPG supplied coatings for the first and second ‘Spirit of Hong Kong’ liveries as well.”
Cheng said the PPG Aerospace application support centre in Suzhou, China, worked closely with Cathay Pacific to produce paint samples for colour matching, as well as the blended coatings. "With eight colours needed in a short time period, the PPG Aerospace team at ASC-Suzhou worked quickly to provide the samples and specific size packages of the blended paints.”
The aircraft was painted by Taikoo Aircraft Engineering Co Ltd in Xiamen, Fujian, China.

FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS…
American Roy C Farrell and Australian Sydney H de Kantzow founded Cathay Pacific Airways in 1946 as a small freight and passenger carrier.
As Hong Kong’s home airline, today Cathay Pacific ranks as the world’s 19th largest airline by operating revenue, 14th largest in terms of revenue passenger kilometres and seventh largest in freight tonne kilometres. Serving 182 destinations in 42 countries and territories, Cathay Pacific carried nearly 29M revenue passengers in 2012.
One of Hong Kong’s largest employers, Cathay Pacific and its subsidiaries employ 31,600 people worldwide. It is a founding member of the oneworld alliance and a partner of Asia Miles.