No Leaving on this Jet Plane

Emirates Neon took on the job of reproducing a full-scale Boeing 777 jet for a billboard for Etihad Airways located near Abu Dhabi stadium in the United Arab Emirates. Local media agency TBWA/RAAD conceived the idea and Emirates won the job bid over nine other companies.

The shop used its Gandinnovations Jeti 3318″?a 126-in. solvent rollfed wide-format printer”?to produce the 28,417 sq ft of graphics. The machine printed the Boeing images onto Star Flex frontlit media”?printing for 75 hours non-stop. The super-sized billboard was printed in 3-meter strips, protected with lacquer, and then seamed together to make one huge banner.

Install involved more than just slapping some graphics on a billboard. In fact, there was no billboard at the job's outset. Emirates had to construct a custom-shaped billboard from scratch, creating a foundation for the graphics that measured 79 x 361 ft– more than seven times longer and five times higher than the typical 14 x 48-ft billboard. The fully assembled banner was then mounted on the aircraft-shaped billboard.

The creation of the billboard and subsequent installation of graphics took 45 days from start to finish; the push during the last few days involved more than 90 workers working 24/7. Completed in December 2005, the client only wanted the billboard for 6 months, but it is built to last much longer.

EMIRATES NEON
www.emiratesneon.com