Two days ago, I just repositioned a Midwest CRJ from MKE to ROW (Roswell, NM) for painting. The midwest plane was painted in our neutral Skywest paint. White fuselage with red/blue tail. The Skywest maintenance person I left the aircraft with in ROW said that the aircraft was only getting a new paint job on the tail and they were moving the N number a little further forward on the fuselage. (3 day job at most) The new tail paint is going to be neutral Skywest, red and blue, just updated a bit.

He specifically said the plane was being painted this way so it could operate in all three partner systems that we fly in - United, Delta, AirTran.

He said he had no information about any Skywest aircraft to be repainted in AirTran colors. They would not be able to be used throughout the rest of our system if they had that AirTran paint scheme.

Note: for 3hrs 10min, the FO and I had to smell that left over chocolate chip cookie smell, but after thoroughly searching the galley, found no left over cookies. We did find one remaining Diet Coke can though. It made for a long, hungry flight.