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Southwest Airlines Unveils New Look For Its Planes

Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines will put a new paint job on its planes, adding a splash of bright color as it enters middle age and faces many changes.

Southwest Airlines will put a new paint job on its planes, adding a splash of bright color as it enters middle age and faces many changes. It's also adding a social media "Listening Center."

The airline introduced its new livery Monday during an event in a hangar at its headquarters next to Dallas Love Field.

Blue is still the dominant color, but the planes will also have red, yellow and blue swooshes on the tail and wing tips. Southwest calls it “Heart One.”

Southwest wasn't able to keep it a surprise. Pictures of a Boeing 737 in the new livery leaked on the Internet over the weekend.

The change comes in a year during which 43-year-old Southwest has begun international flights, expanded in New York and Washington, D.C., and is freed from longtime government limits on its Dallas schedule.

Those restrictions go away in October once the Wright Amendment comes to an end.

The amendment has long limited Southwest to offer nonstop service from Love Field to nine states, including Texas.

Here’s a time-lapse video of a Southwest plane getting the new look:

Lauren Silverman was the Health, Science & Technology reporter/blogger at KERA News. She was also the primary backup host for KERA’s Think and the statewide newsmagazine  Texas Standard. In 2016, Lauren was recognized as Texas Health Journalist of the Year by the Texas Medical Association. She was part of the Peabody Award-winning team that covered Ebola for NPR in 2014. She also hosted "Surviving Ebola," a special that won Best Long Documentary honors from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. (PRNDI). And she's won a number of regional awards, including an honorable mention for Edward R. Murrow award (for her project “The Broken Hip”), as well as the Texas Veterans Commission’s Excellence in Media Awards in the radio category.