White is always the best and should be the only choice

The plane is the only art there, anything else, text or any other logos or supporting images will complete with the plane for the point of interest. So anything added, including a colored background, should suitably secondary to the plane. That color you used on the first one has a lot of weight on it's own being that the plane is mostly white and silver.
Do you like it on white better?
Tell me what or who the "Aardvark painters" are? Is it a group or just Australian aircraft painters in general? Using specific numbers for lights and darks worries me a little, wouldn't it be better to use your eye to decide how dark to go? Your plane looks fine but the lighting is pretty diffuse. It might be a little more peppy to beef up the shadows just a tiny bit.