Just a random thought I had: the weather gives a jet's paint job a battering; meaning they need to be resprayed approximately once every 5-10 years. (See How often is a passenger jet aircraft painted?)
Roughly what might a paint job for a 777 like the one shown in the YouTube video below, cost an airline?
Bonus: I believe afterwards that the weight of the plane has to be recalculated, so as not to affect weight-and-balance. How is this calculation done?
According to WallStreetJournal article, Tom Horton stated in an interview that :
A 777 paint job can cost \$100,000 to \$200,000, depending on the number of colors involved, and a smaller Airbus A320 can cost $50,000 or more.
A news article that linked that video said it took Emirates Airlines 6550 hours to repaint 21 aircraft, an average of 312 hours each. They run a round-the-clock operation, with 26-30 people working at any given time, so that translates into roughly 8500-9000 man hours to complete each plane. If the average entry level salary there is similar to the US at \$18/hr, that's upwards of $175,000 just in labor.
And if a paint job weighs 555 lbs on a 747 (and that's after it dries – think of the lost moisture), and your spray efficiency is around 50%, we're talking closer to 2000 lbs of wet paint to purchase to get the job done. At around 9.0 lbs/gallon, that's about 220 gallons of paint. Sherwin Williams sells paint for around \$50/gal, so that's another \$11,000 for the paint.
Then facility costs for electricity and cooling, but I don't have to get into that, as we're already nearing the upper estimate of the per-aircraft cost vasin1987 cited in his answer.
£900'000, apparently, in the case of the Royal Air Force's Airbus A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport.
I know it's not exactly an airliner.
For reference, this is what a paint-job costing a little under £1 million looks like (both photos below from BBC News).
It's not clear to me why this particular repainting job should be so expensive. Perhaps it reflects the British Prime Minister's famed ability to obtain excellent value for tax-payers' money on prestige projects.
Here's the plane in its original livery:
I am not a military aviation expert, so I cannot say whether it is a good thing for a dual-use air tanker to be made more conspicuous.
ZZ336 an unusual registration for a British aircraft? Of is that its military tail number and that doesn't follow normal national registration standards?
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The cost depends on a lot of factors, how many planes, how many colors, how desperate the manufacturer is for your business or if you have your own paint shop.
But given the care that must be taken to use the correct paint, the correct solvents, dispose of everything and the FAA requirement that the paperwork for the job must weigh more than the paint - I'm guessing several $10K.
Boeing have some data on the amount of paint and if you should paint or polish including the fact that the paint scheme on a 747 weighs nearly 0.5Ton
Not an expert far from it, though have inspected large aircraft paint finish for Government contract job and £84million hanging on the outcome, once. It is a specialised area, much stripping, pre-treatment, tie-coats, preparation, not your average paint and partial stripping of components may well be required. It feels like, say £900,000 for a multi-colour finish, might be something of a bargain. A previous comment suggested weight gain about 550 lbs (American?), sounds reasonable, but factor in stripping losses first. Specialised labour, working at heights, safety regime, security requirements, safe disposal of waste, it's a big project so project management team and large facility, (American?)it all adds up. Hope this is helpful and not pompous.
I don't know where you come up with these numbers. I'm a 20,000 corporate pilot and also an aircraft broker dealing in corporate aircraft sales. A Challenger 605 or 604 which is a 10 to 12 passage plane cost from \$120,000 up to \$180,000 for the better shops. I have had several painted over the years with recent quotes in the last 60 days in July 2019 and the lowest price was \$120,000. A 777 would take 10 times as much paint alone.
