Most aircraft are unveiled the way a new fridge is delivered: someone opens a hangar door and everybody nods. On Monday, 9 November 2026, Etihad Airways did it differently. Inside the Etihad Engineering facility in Abu Dhabi, a single enormous curtain fell away to reveal a Boeing 787 painted the colour of a very ripe papaya, and Guinness World Records was on hand to certify the curtain.

The jet is Etihad’s tribute to its new partner McLaren Racing, and the airline bills it as the first time a Formula 1 team has been featured on a wide-body aircraft. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, Etihad CEO Antonoaldo Neves and two-time Formula 1 world champion Mika Häkkinen were in the room. The following afternoon the orange Dreamliner left for Madrid on a scheduled service.

Underneath the papaya is a 787-10 with an unusually interesting CV. Before it ever carried an Etihad passenger, this airframe spent its first weeks as a flying laboratory for Boeing and NASA.

A Curtain, a Record and a Very Orange Dreamliner

The record Etihad claimed is not for the paint but for the reveal. According to the airline, the event set the record title for the “largest single piece kabuki reveal”, independently verified by Guinness World Records. A kabuki drop is the theatre trick in which a huge sheet of fabric is released all at once, so that the thing behind it appears in a single flourish rather than being slowly uncovered like a sofa in a dust sheet. Neither Etihad nor Guinness has published the curtain’s dimensions.

What appeared behind it was a fuselage in McLaren’s signature papaya from the nose to well past the wing, giving way to a dark rear fuselage. Etihad kept its own geometric tailfin, and McLaren Racing titles sit just ahead of the wing. Etihad has not said how much of the design is paint and how much is applied film.

Trade outlets Aerospace Global News, Simple Flying and aeroTELEGRAPH all identify the aircraft as A6-BMI, and fleet registries list that registration as a Boeing 787-10, serial number 60768. The registration is also visible in Etihad’s own photographs. Etihad’s press release does not name the variant, calling it simply one of its flagship 787 Dreamliners, but the evidence points one way.

First? Read the Small Print

Etihad’s wording is careful, and worth reading closely: the first time a Formula 1 team has been featured on a wide-body aircraft. Afterburner found no earlier example of a Formula 1 team livery on a twin-aisle airliner, but the claim comes from Etihad and has not been independently audited. Formula 1 itself is not new to Etihad’s fuselages. In November 2018 the airline unveiled a Formula 1-themed 787 for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, a race it has sponsored as title partner since 2009.

Etihad filmed that earlier paint job, and the timelapse is the best answer to the question everyone asks about special liveries: how on earth do you get a picture onto something this big?

How Do You Paint a Dreamliner?

Slowly, and in layers. Etihad has not published how many hours, litres or kilograms went into A6-BMI. Flight-tracking data reported by Simple Flying shows the jet’s last flight before the repaint was EY475 from Jakarta to Abu Dhabi on 11 October, followed by about a month on the ground before it reappeared in papaya.

Etihad has not said where the paint went on, but its engineering arm runs two dedicated paint hangars and says it has painted Airbus A380s, A350s and Boeing 787s there, including special liveries, plus an in-house facility that makes large-format decals for fuselages. For a sense of scale, the best-documented widebody example comes from Airbus and British Airways in 2013. Twenty-four painters at Airbus’ Hamburg hangar spent two weeks on BA’s first A380, using 2,300 litres of paint across 3,500 square metres in five coats that together weighed around 650 kg. A 787 is a smaller canvas, but that weight is carried on every flight, which is why airlines worry about it. Afterburner has looked at the arithmetic of paint weight and why new jets fly in primer Prima.

A Former Flying Laboratory

A6-BMI has worn special colours before. In 2020 Boeing chose an Etihad 787-10 as its ecoDemonstrator, the first time the testbed programme used that variant. Boeing announced about four weeks of trials from August that year, with NASA and Safran Landing Systems measuring noise from sensors on the aircraft and the ground, including from modified landing gear, and with test flights on a blend of sustainable fuel. Registry photographs show A6-BMI wearing the ecoDemonstrator titles, and Etihad took delivery that autumn.

It is a neat bit of continuity. The 787 programme has a long history of NASA noise work, from the sawtooth chevron nozzles on its engines onwards, and this airframe helped write a later chapter of it before swapping microphones for papaya.

Where to Spot the Papaya

The debut came on Tuesday, 10 November, as EY103 from Abu Dhabi to Madrid, scheduled for a 14:15 departure. Etihad says the aircraft will then fly across its normal network, naming Dublin, Milan and Vienna in Europe and Bali, Bangkok and Delhi in Asia, so it will not be confined to Formula 1 weekends.

The livery caps a partnership announced on 26 February 2026, which made Etihad an Official Partner of the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team and McLaren’s Hypercar team in the World Endurance Championship. Etihad’s name already sits on the MCL40’s rear wing and halo and on the drivers’ helmets. The obvious next stop is home: Abu Dhabi hosts the Formula 1 season finale in December, and an orange Dreamliner on the Yas Island approach would be hard to miss.

Sources: Etihad Airways press release (via Zawya), Etihad Airways on X, Aerospace Global News, The National, Gulf News, Simple Flying, aeroTELEGRAPH, Boeing (ecoDemonstrator release, July 2020), Etihad Engineering, Airbus and British Airways (A380 painting, 2013), AirHistory.net and Airport-Data fleet records.

Header photo: Etihad Airways