Fokker F28 Fellowship variant
Fokker F28 Fellowship F.28 Mk 6000
Long fuselage with greater span, leading-edge slats and more powerful engines. It flew on 27 September 1973; only two were built.
- September 27, 1973
- First flight
- 2
- Units built
History
The slatted Fellowship
The Mk 6000 took the long Mk 2000/4000 fuselage into short-field territory: greater span, more powerful and quieter Rolls-Royce RB183 Mk555-15H engines and, above all, leading-edge slats, absent from the rest of the family, whose wing had a fixed leading edge. It flew on 27 September 1973 and was certified in the Netherlands on 30 October 1975.
A commercial failure
Neither the Mk 6000 nor its short-fuselage equivalent, the Mk 5000, found a buyer. Two Mk 6000s were built by 1976 and no Mk 5000 at all. After using them for a time, Fokker sold both Mk 6000s to Air Mauritanie, but not before converting them to Mk 2000 standard: without a market to justify the slats, the extra complication did not pay.
What survived
The idea of improving the wing did prosper by another route: the span increase tested here passed to the production Mk 3000 and Mk 4000, which took the bulk of the sales.