Braniff Jellybeans Pt1: The Greens

In 1965 Harding Lawrence was appointed to the Presidency of Braniff International. Up till then it had been a well run but relatively small trunk airline. Lawrence had other ideas and the wild ride that characterised his tenure would change Braniff from an also ran to a colourful and vibrant airline. Unfortunately Lawrence would also prove to be the downfall of Braniff but that wasn't until 1982. First there was the 'End of the Plain Plane' era.

The 'End of the Plain Plane' livery became known as the Jellybean scheme. Its bold block colours and white wings revolutionised airline marketing and set the stage for almost everything that has come since. This post isn't supposed to detail the history of Braniff's Jellybean era. Instead for some time I have been impressed by the work of John Evanich III (JEE3) over at the website http://www.airlinercafe.com. He has produced a masterful series of forum posts detailing lost schemes, however a true passion of his is clearly Braniff International.

Just recently he has delivered a spectacular history of the Braniff Jellybean scheme colour variations in amazing detail. With this and the following posts I want to publicise his excellent work and compare it back to the 1:400 Braniff Jellybeans in my collection.

We'll start with the greens. Braniff's initial 7 Jellybean schemes didn't include any green variations. However following the Panagra takeover, from 1968 7 new colour variations were introduced and included no less than 3 green variations - namely:

• Dark Panagra Green - see JEE3's detailed posting here
  
• Light Panagra Green (H& G New Green) - see JEE3's detailed posting here
  
• Lime Green - see JEE3's detailed posting here
  

I have four Green Braniff Jellybeans in my fleet. It seems however that old photos make it often very difficult to work out what green the plane is actually wearing due to the tint that old film suffers from. This isn't helped because the lists of what plane wore what colours are not completely recorded. For detailed info I strongly suggest that you check out JEE3's exceptional postings on the colours as linked to from above.

I'm not really very good on colour differences but as you can see there are clearly 4 different greens on show in my 4 models!! The Electra looks good for its proper Lime Green and the 707 appears good as Light Panagra Green. The 727 should be in the same scheme as the 707 however it looks like instead it is wearing a good rendition of the Dark Panagra Green. She certainly looks a lot darker than she must have been in the photos I've seen. I don't know what's going on with the One-Eleven!

Despite being registered as the eighth Electra N9708C was actually the first of the model put into service by Braniff. It appears from photos that she wore the Lime Green scheme. Two of the nine original Electra’s were lost in service with N9707C crashing late in her career in 1968 near Dawson Texas in a crash that has never been fully explained. This along with the introduction of more jets saw the Electra’s career’s curtailed with Braniff. Ship 1106 was sold to Lansa of Peru as OB-R939 but her new career was short-lived as she crashed on takeoff at Cuzco after the failure of her number three engine in 1970.

N1545 was the nineteenth One-Eleven built. She was the fifth delivered to Braniff and arrived in the Light Blue Jellybean colours before being repainted into the two shades of Panagra Green (Dark followed by the Light). Along with eleven others she moved from Braniff to the fleet of Allegheny Airlines (though admittedly three got their via the Mohawk acquisition). In fact only N1541, N1543 and N1553 didn’t go to Allegheny, the latter being written off in 1966. N1545 took a familiar route joining the USAir fleet before sale to the fledgling Florida Express, which was then taken over by the reborn Braniff. She was in fact one of eight One-Elevens who began their careers with Braniff who ended up at the second incarnation of the carrier. Sold to private owners in 1992, she was broken up in 1997.

N7100 was the third to last 707 convertible operated by Braniff - in the Light Panagra Green colours. Taken out of service along with her eight sisters, in 1971, ship 554 was leased to Trans Mediterranean Airlines, but not bought outright until 5th July 1980 when she was reregistered as OD-AGW. The aircraft was unfortunately written off only a year later, on 7th July 1981, after sustaining extensive damage from Israeli shelling.

The ninth 727 delivered to Braniff, N7278, was the second to sport the Ochre variant of the Jellybean era, which was also applied to 3 other 727s, 3 One-Elevens, 2 B720s, 1 Electra and 1 707-320. She was repainted into Panagra Green prior to the Flying Colors era when she was redressed in the Green / Light Green combination. Unlike almost all the 727-100s delivered to Braniff before her she didn’t join Trans Brasil and served with Braniff until near the airline’s collapse. She was one of several series 100s sold to UPS where she became N910UP. Re-engined with Tays in 1994 she wasn’t retired until February 2003. Stored at Roswell she was broken up in 2004.

In part 2 we'll move into another Jellybean colour range.