AMERICAN AIRLINES is considering changing its iconic, decades-old, polished-aluminium jet livery. The practice of highlighting the polished metal of the planes—an instantly memorable trademark that even non-American flyers can recognise—has been in use since before the second world war. But according to what airline officials are telling Bloomberg's Mary Schlangenstein, that design might not last much longer:

“We have made a decision to embark on a modernization of our brand," Chief Commercial Officer Virasb Vahidi said in an interview. "That could culminate with a potentially new livery and logo—that's something we are evaluating." New planes that AMR Corp. (AAMRQ)'s American will begin receiving in 2013 offer a chance to update its red, white and blue stripes on the hull and tail logo with red and blue A's and a stylized eagle.

This seems to be a bit of a trial balloon from Mr Vahidi—it's rare for C-level executives to go to the press with a company's internal deliberations unless they're trying to gauge public reaction. It's easy to see why some people might be turned off by American's aggressively old-fashioned livery, but I like the look. I'm susceptible to nostalgia for the "good old days" of air travel, even if such nostalgia is misplaced: I probably wouldn't have been able to afford to fly regularly in the so-called good old days.

If you have to bet, bet on the demise of the polished-aluminium look. Boeing's new Dreamliners aren't made from metal; they're composite-plastic, so the polished-aluminium look would have to be faked. As Ms Schlangenstein points out, American has got around this problem before; it painted a 1988 delivery of Airbuses grey after the manufacturer expressed worries that polishing the aluminium would expose it to corrosion. (Never mind that AA had already been flying polished-aluminium planes for decades by that point.) AA eventually convinced Airbus not to worry, but it no longer flies the planes in question.

If the Dreamliner is success (and Boeing has bet a lot that it will be), and American flies it, grey paint is probably not going to be a particularly appealing option. Even painted grey, the Dreamliners wouldn't look the same as American's older, shinier planes. Just another casualty of the rise of the plastic plane.