Fokker F28 Fellowship

By 1960 Fokker was in an awkwardly comfortable position. The F27 Friendship was selling well, the works were also busy with military programmes such as the Bréguet Br.1150 Atlantic and the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, and the market was starting to ask for jets on routes that turboprops had owned until then. A British European Airways specification for a fast turbofan-powered regional airliner provided the initial push. Fokker's answer was not to imitate the bigger manufacturers but to do what it did best: ask its customers. The design leaned explicitly on the experience of F27 operators, especially in North America, and from that consultation came the two obsessions that shaped the whole aircraft — ease of maintenance, and the removal of technical and commercial friction with the American market.

Market research also changed the aeroplane's size. The first studies described a 50-seater with a range of about 1,650 km; the definitive layout grew to 65 seats five abreast, with a matching increase in maximum take-off weight. In capacity it landed near the Vickers Viscount, but far faster than any turboprop. In exchange Fokker accepted a cruise speed that was deliberately modest for a jet, which allowed a low, gently swept wing, good low-speed behaviour and — the point of the whole exercise — the ability to work from 85% of the airports already served by the F27 and the ubiquitous DC-3. Fokker always sold it as a complement to the Friendship rather than a successor, and for years both types ran on separate assembly lines.

On 28 April 1962, at the Hannover air show, Fokker revealed the F28 Fellowship.

Work was divided from the outset. Fokker designed and built the nose section, centre fuselage and inner wing; Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm and VFW-Fokker in Germany produced the forward and rear fuselage sections and the tail assembly; Short Brothers in Belfast designed and built the outer wings. Final assembly was at Schiphol. Funding was shared in the same spirit: the Dutch government covered half of the Dutch stake and the West German government the greater part of the German one, with the balance coming from Fokker's own capital and its partners. Sud Aviation and Hawker Siddeley were both approached and both declined.

There was an American chapter too. Fairchild studied a locally built derivative, the Fairchild 228, a roughly 50-seat version with Rolls-Royce RB.203 Trent engines. It never reached production, and the company ended up distributing the F28 as it was.

The powerplant nearly went another way. Early design work assumed a pair of Bristol Siddeley BS.75 turbofans, but when Fokker moved to negotiate a contract the manufacturer withdrew the engine: having lost the BAC 1-11, it judged the remaining market too small. Rolls-Royce offered the Spey Junior, a simplified Spey, and from the first prototype onwards the Fellowship flew behind some version of that engine.

The F28 shares its general configuration with the British BAC One-Eleven and the first-generation DC-9 — T-tail, rear-mounted engines — but its internal logic differs. The low wing partly shields the engine intakes from foreign object damage, no small matter in an aircraft built for unpaved strips. The structure is fail-safe and uses the bonding techniques pioneered on the F27. Fuel is carried in the outer wing and the fuselage, with optional pylon-mounted tanks for extended-range work.

The wing, with a slight crescent sweep, is built in two pieces spliced onto the fuselage and carries ailerons near the tips together with simple flaps; on approach the ailerons work with the flaps. Flight controls are duplicated cable runs, aerodynamically balanced except for the rudder. Instead of thrust reversers Fokker chose a five-section lift dumper that operates only after touchdown: less weight, less maintenance and, again, less chance of the engines swallowing debris. The leading edge is fixed — slats were flown experimentally and offered as an option, but never became standard — and is de-iced with engine bleed air.

The aircraft's signature, though, is in the tail. The rear cone splits into hydraulically actuated halves that open outwards as a variable airbrake, an idea seen earlier on the Blackburn Buccaneer and later on the British Aerospace 146. It does more than slow the aeroplane down: it allows rapid descents from cruising altitude and lets the engines sit at a higher setting on approach, so spool-up lag largely disappears if a sudden increase in thrust or a go-around is needed. A retractable tricycle undercarriage on large low-pressure tyres, with anti-skid brakes on the main wheels, completes the picture of an aircraft meant to get in and out of difficult fields.

The first prototype was registered PH-JHG in tribute to chief designer J. H. Greidanus and lifted off from Schiphol on 9 May 1967 with Jas Moll in command, Abe van der Schraaf as test pilot and Cees Dik as flight engineer; the flight lasted an hour and twenty-five minutes. PH-WEV and PH-MOL followed as second and third prototypes. Certification came on 24 February 1969. The first order had been placed by the German carrier LTU, but the first revenue flight was flown by Norway's Braathens SAFE on 28 March 1969; the airline eventually operated five aircraft.

The **Mk 1000** is the baseline: 65 seats in typical five-abreast layout at 79 cm pitch, up to 70 in high density, a 13 m³ hold, 27.4 m long, 23.6 m span, 76.4 m² of wing and a maximum take-off weight of 29,480 kg. The **1000C** adds a large main-deck cargo door.

The **Mk 2000** stretches the fuselage by 1.4 m ahead of the wing and 0.76 m behind it, to 29.6 m, lifting capacity to 79 passengers and the hold to 15.9 m³ without touching the wing or the weights. It first flew on 28 April 1971 — the prototype was a converted PH-JHG — entered revenue service with Nigeria Airways that October and was approved on 30 August 1972. Only ten were built.

The **Mk 3000** returns to the short fuselage but adopts the wing extended by 1.5 m in span, to 25.07 m and 79 m², with greater structural strength and more fuel. Maximum take-off weight rises to 33,110 kg and range with maximum payload reaches 2,872 km, the best in the family. It was approved on 19 July 1978 and entered service with Garuda Indonesian Airways. The census also carries the **3000C** freight-door version and the **3000R/3000RC** subvariants at a different maximum weight.

The **Mk 4000** — the most successful version, and the representative variant of this entry — combines the long Mk 2000 fuselage with the extended wing, two overwing exits on each side, quieter Spey Mk 555-15H engines, a redesigned flight deck and a "wide-look" cabin with enclosed overhead bins. It was approved on 13 December 1976, appeared on 20 October 1976 and entered service with Linjeflyg at the end of that year, seating up to 85 passengers, with 10,556 kg of maximum payload and an empty weight of 17,611 kg.

The **Mk 5000** was to marry the short fuselage with the extended wing, leading-edge slats and the more powerful Spey Mk 555-15H. On paper it promised excellent short-field performance, but the project was abandoned and none was built. The **Mk 6000** did fly, on 27 September 1973, with the long fuselage, extended wing and slats; it was certified in the Netherlands on 30 October 1975 and two were completed. After a period with Fokker both were sold to Air Mauritanie, converted back to Mk 2000 standard. The **Mk 6600** never left the drawing board, nor did the American Fairchild 228.

The Fellowship found its market exactly where it had been aimed: regional carriers, countries with uneven airport infrastructure, and government fleets. Garuda Indonesia was by far the largest operator with 62 aircraft over time; Time Air and Canadian Regional accumulated 35, mostly second and third hand; the Ansett group in Australia operated more than fifteen; Aerolíneas Argentinas flew five and Biman Bangladesh four. Some twenty-two further airlines used smaller numbers. The longest non-stop F28 route ever flown was MacRobertson Miller Airlines' Perth–Kununurra service in Western Australia, roughly 2,240 km, at the time also the longest twin-jet route in the world.

Military and government use was extensive: VIP and head-of-state transports in the Netherlands, Argentina and Indonesia among others. Argentina's TC-53, fitted with a forward cargo door, served for forty-four years, from 1975 to 2019.

The F28 carries the highest hull-loss rate among current commercial airliners outside those built in the former USSR, the CIS or China, for which operational data is lacking: 4.62 per million flights, against 1.78 for the Boeing 737-100/200 and 1.45 for the DC-9. A common thread runs through many of its worst accidents: ice. Turkish Airlines Flight 301 at İzmir in 1974, Air Ontario Flight 1363 at Dryden in 1989, Korean Air Flight 175 at Gimpo that same year and USAir Flight 405 at LaGuardia in 1992 were attributed to wing icing, inadequate de-icing procedures, or both. Others were of an entirely different nature: NLM CityHopper Flight 431 lost a wing inside a tornado in 1981; Iran Aseman Flight 746 suffered a double engine shutdown from contaminated fuel in 1994.

Production closed in 1987 after 241 airframes, in favour of two direct descendants: the Fokker 70 and the larger Fokker 100, which carried the F28's general architecture forward with new-generation engines and systems. Scheduled civil service ended in 2019, when Fly-SAX grounded its last aircraft for lack of crews; whatever flew afterwards belonged to LADE, the state airline embedded in the Argentine Air Force. Preserved examples survive in Argentina, Indonesia, Myanmar, Norway and the United States, including Braathens SAFE's LN-SUC at the Norwegian Aviation Museum in Bodø.