Why are airplanes white?

Customer demand. Aircraft manufacturers have offered an incredible
number of colors and combinations over the years. In the '30s all
over yellow with a black lightning bolt was hugely popular with the
Aeronca C-2 and C-3, so much so that Piper copied it exactly on the
Cub line. The Aeronca "Bathtub" was forgotten while its paint color
and scheme became widely known as "Cub yellow".

In the '60s-'80s Cessna would reverse its paint scheme as an option,
with the accent color being the base and the white being the accent.
It was done from time to time, mostly on airplanes going into Alaska
or northern Canada, but it wasn't very popular. If you saw 200
airplanes parked on the ramp at Cessna in Wichita or at Strother
Field, maybe one or two would have the reversed paint scheme.

Bare aluminum was popular on and off in the '40s and '50s, but
horribly hard to care for and it faded away. In the '50s many of
Cessna's paint schemes were overall bare aluminum with one or two
accent colors.

White just won out over the years as a base color.

You're right, for visibility things could be better. At one time the
CAA toyed with requiring some amount of international orange on all
paint jobs. It came to naught. At least few people paint airplanes
with the stealth paint job United Airlines used for quite a while
(it's still on some of their airplanes), those airplanes completely
disappear at dawn and dusk.

All the best,
Rick

"gatt" wrote in message ...
Here in Oregon, where there is often white overcast and snow in the
mountains in the winter, there's a lot of white. It seems to me that
painting your aircraft white is akin to camoflage. Wouldn't it be better if
airplanes were missile red, cub yellow, construction orange or some other
extremely-visible color?

Once over Estacada while I was soloing toward my private ticket I saw a
camoflaged ultralight puttering along near the airfield over a forest. One
has to wonder: what completely ignorant A-HOLE makes his aircraft
deliberately difficult to see, and then flies into airspace regularly used
by student pilots? That's suicidal, but I digress:

White is a poor color for aircraft because it's hard to see except against
blue sky. Is there a particular reason it's so popular?

-c