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Fokker 100
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Fokker 100
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Fokker 100
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Fokker F100
The Fokker F100 is a small, twin-engine, regional jet airliner and feederliner
from the Fokker company. Low operational costs and almost no modern competition
in the 100-seat short-range class made it a best seller when it was introduced
in the late 1980s, but improved models of the Boeing 737 and Airbus A319 and 318
squeezed it into a niche and Fokker was soon insolvent. Production ended in 1997,
with 283 airframes delivered.
The F100 design was announced in 1983, as an updated replacement for their
popular, but outdated, Fokker F28 Fellowship design. The most noticeable
difference is the much longer fuselage which almost doubled the seating from 65
in the original F28 series to 107 in a three-by-two, single-class arrangement.
Fokker also introduced a redesigned wing for the F100 which they claimed was
30% more efficient in cruise. The engines were upgraded to the modern Rolls-Royce
Tay turbofans while the cockpit was updated with an all-glass instrumentation
package.
Two prototypes were built. The first, PH-MKH, flew for the first time on
November 30, 1986, and the second, PH-MKC, followed on February 25, 1987. The
type certificate was awarded in November, 1987. Testing went smoothly and the
first deliveries of the Tay 650-15 powered versions started to Swissair in
February, 1988.
The engines are attached to the sides of the fuselage near the tail rather than
the more common location on the wing. During takeoff significant engine noise
can be heard inside the cabin especially for the passengers at the rear of the
plane who are sitting next to the engines. Once the plane is in the air, the
pilot is able to reduce the power and the engines run more quietly.
By 1991, Fokker had already produced 70 units and had orders for a total of more
than 230. An extended range version with additional fuel tanks in the wings was
introduced in 1993, and a quick-change passenger/freighter version in 1994,
the F100QC. A shorter version was introduced in 1993, as a direct replacement
for the earlier F27, known as the Fokker 70, which removed 4.70 m of the fuselage
and reduced seating to 80. Studies on the 130 seat F130 and Fokker Executive Jet
100 were never followed up on.
Although the design was a success in the marketplace, Fokker continued to lose
massive amounts of money producing it. Eventually their parent company, Daimler
Benz Aerospace, gave up and shut them down. Fokker collapsed financially in 1996,
and wound up production in early 1997. There had been some dicussion about the
company being purchased by Bombardier but the plans fell through. This is
particularly ironic given that Bombardier is currently scrambling to produce a
new 130 seat design to compete with Embraer's latest aircraft (in 2004).
An Amsterdam based group, Rekkof Restart (Fokker spelled backwards) started
negotiating to re-open the Fokker 70 and F100 lines in 1999, but the deal never
completed. There is still talk about the possibility to re-open the
Fokker 70 production line. Like any number of designs, the F70/F100 was being
increasingly squeezed from below by stretched versions of the Bombardier and
Embraer regional jets, which also killed off plans for the Fairchild JET and an
unnamed design from ATR.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Fokker F100".
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