Our Stormtrooper Plane is here!
Published October 2019
The coolest plane in the world is ours! To celebrate our partnership with Disney to advertise Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the new land at Walt Disney World Resort, we painted one of our Boeing 777s like a Stormtrooper. Starting in October, the Stormtrooper Plane will take flight, bringing the adventures of the movies to airports and passengers. Here, we share the behind the scenes of this endeavor:
Throughout the past year, we met regularly with the Disney team to develop a project, that can be best defined as, from another galaxy! One great example of the complexity of the project is that it took two months of work to define if the plane should get a paint job or decals, as well as the colors and materials that would appear on the aircraft’s fuselage. A collaborative work between engineers, technicians, and our departments of Marketing and MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Operations) and Fleet Project – all Star Wars fans!
The candidates to get the Stormtrooper paint job were the LATAM planes with the new Premium Business cabin. But to decide which one was perfect, we had to check different data, like the aircraft’s landing and takeoff dates on the day the new land was set to open, August 29. Until we made the final decision: a Boeing 777, with capacity for 410 passengers.
The plane went to an Etihad Maintenance Center in the city of Abu Dhabi, in the Arab Emirates. Over the course of 21 days (8 more compared to a traditional paint job), the team painted the plane with a paint that can withstand temperatures of -60 °F [-50 °C] at altitudes above 30,000 feet.
For almost four years, the Stormtrooper Plane will cross the skies and land in several LATAM destinations: Orlando, Miami, Frankfurt, New York, London, and Madrid, always departing from São Paulo. Aboard, you will be able to watch all the movies in the Star Wars saga (available on LATAM Play until March 2020) and the Star Wars animated series Galaxy of Adventure. Additionally, Disney’s creative team developed a dedicated Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Kids Activities book, where children can learn more about the new land, color some of its unique Characters and even challenge their Arabesh (Batuu’s official language). Are you ready to conquer the galaxy with us?
