1976 Boeing 727-200

The big corporate who haws at Ford and the Ford Family of Corporations had big plans for 1976. As one of America’s largest companies they wanted to make a show of their commitment to the United States and national pride for the nations Bicentennial. Executives reasoned that a uniform show of patriotism would be valuable within the hearts and minds of the general public, employees, and politicians. Pursuant to the Bicentennial celebration directive, Ford’s airline FAST was expected to produce a brand campaign to celebrate the year’s events and the stakes were high because FAST was perhaps the most singularly visible of FFC’s brands.
Thankfully, designers had over a year to develop plans. FAST’s livery was already slated for an update in 1975 so repainting many aircraft in a special one year livery was not as wasteful as it could have been given that the aircraft were already needing to be repainted once. American flags placed on normal FAST liveried aircraft wearing the new livery would be abnormally large. However, a small fleet of aircraft in the fleet would wear a special variation of the new livery that aggressively mimicked the American flag and featured myriad touches to further honour the celebration. The first of these aircraft to debut to the public was a 727-200 specially re-registered as N776US and flew a service the morning of December 1^st, 1975 from Boston to Washington DC to kick off the brand event. This aircraft, Spirit of 76, would later be joined by Spirit of America (747), Spirit of Enterprise (L1011), Spirit of Washington (727), Spirit of Franklin (727), and Spirit of Jefferson (727) which all wore similar derivatives of the special livery. The triad of aircraft named after select founding fathers was a point of contention amongst historical groups who argued back and forth on whether the included individuals really deserved their spots over other early American politicians. The small fleet persevered to the end of 1976 when the campaign officially ended. The five other aircraft were repainted promptly into the standard livery but Spirit of 76 remained in the special livery for almost another full year. Finally it was repainted in September of 1977 and the campaign was truly over leaving only a distinctly star spangled impression in its wake.

[Special thanks to GJ for this idea, look out for his work in a similar vein later today]