General news

On July 14th Frans van Zelm sadly passed away. He was a great Fokker aircraft expert and for 35 years he took care of Fokkernews for the AIRnieuws magazine and later the AIRnieuws website, until a debilitating illness struck him in 2017, which prevented him to further enjoy his beloved hobby. Frans will live in the memories of our Fokker community as a very kind and conscientious friend. We wish his wife and daughter the strength to bear this heavy loss.

Alliance Aviation Services has agreed with Helvetic Airlines to purchase the entire F100 fleet of five airframes, spare engines, parts and tooling. Alliance already operates the largest Fokker fleet in the world and it is also the largest supplier of parts, after Fokker Services.

Suriname's Fly All Ways has put their Fokker fleet for sale, consisting of three F70 aircraft.

Trade Air plans to replace their two F100 with two Airbus 319-100 in 2021.

Fokker F27, Fokker 50 & Fokker 60

Fokker F28, Fokker 70 & Fokker 100

Kenya is the only country where Friendships are still operational on a commercial basis; all of them are cargo airplanes. One of these is 5Y-GMD (10378) of Aerospace Consortium International, together with sister ship 5Y-GMC operating on behalf of the United Nations World Food Program in Somalia. In contrast to what all usual sources say, a construction plate check revealed that 5Y-GMD actually is c/n 10378, so we suppose that identities have been mixed up and 5Y-GMC is 10448 (André Alders; Mogadishu, 23 March 2019)

The Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) of Australia flew its second Friendship 25-260619 from Ardmore, New Zealand to its new home base Illawarra Regional Airport, south of Sydney, with intermediate stops at Norfolk Island and Gold Coast. This VH-TQN (11680) is one of the last F27 built and was operated 20 years as ZK-POH by Airwork Flight Operations on behalf of the New Zealand Post until its retirement in 2017. The intention is to keep the Friendship in flying condition as a tribute to the more than 80 F27’s that used to operate in Australia since 1959 (Dave Clements; Gold Coast, 25 June 2019)

For Fokker enthusiast, Kenya is the country to be, as there are over 50 airframes in existence, mainly F50, of which quite a few operate to and in Somalia. A relative new airline is Maandeeq Air of Somalia that uses some leased F50s, amongst which 5Y-SMS (20112) in basic Silverstone livery with Maandeeq titles (André Alders; Mogadishu, 24 March 2019)

Besides two passenger F50s, Jetways Airlines operates three F50F freighters, two of which were previously in service with Miniliner. 5Y-JWG (20191) clearly shows its Italian history by the distinctive Miniliner color scheme (André Alders; Mogadishu, 24 March 2019)

At least six F50s are or have been in operation with Silverstone Air Services. 5Y-IZO (20244) sports a non-standard color scheme (André Alders; Mogadishu, 24 March 2019)

Another Kenyan operator of which not much is known, is Freedom Airline Express that has two F50 in the fleet, 5Y-CHM (20249) and 5Y-FAI of which we had a picture in our March 2018 edition (#5). Both carry an executive-style livery without titles (André Alders; Mogadishu, 19 March 2019)

On 200619 NASA executed a vertical drop test at their Langley Landing and Impact Research Facility, using former Canadian Regional F28-1000 C-GCRN (11051). This type of tests are performed more often there, but this F28 was the largest aircraft ever crashed intentionally. The airframe was equipped with 24 dummy passengers for occupant crash response and likelihood of injury investigations. It was dropped from a large gantry some 50 m high and thousands of data were collected, giving researchers a solid basis for computer simulations on aircraft crash safety. For the test NASA worked together with the FAA, the US Army Test and Evaluation Command and the National Transportation Safety Board. The left side was painted in the special grey and white dot pattern that NASA uses for photogrammetry and for the occasion the airframe had been adorned with the appropriate, but fake registration C-RASH. (NASA/David Meade; Hampton, VA, 20 June 2019). See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrc889vD1BY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqiGbOWCvWU for videos of the test.

The ex-Sultra Air Fellowship PK-NAM (11142) was used for a graffiti drawing competition, on the occasion of the 10^th anniversary of the Indonesian Air Force Maintenance Department #10 at Husein Sastranegara Air Base at Bandung. The event was sponsored by the local Propan Raya spray paint manufacturer. The result was a unique and very colorful F28 with two very differently painted sides (Propan Bandung Team; Bandung, 31 March 2019)

As mentioned previously, Kenyan Safe Air Company leased one F100 from Bek Air from January to mid-July 2019: UP-F1007 (11496). It operated in basic Bek Air colors, without additional titles (André Alders; Mogadishu, 25 March 2019)

Recently Helvetic withdrew the F100 from active service, after having operated 9 of the type over 16 years. The five last F100s were put in storage at Bratislava, awaiting delivery to Alliance Airlines. HB-JVC (11501) is leading the row, followed by JVE (11459), JVH (11324), JVF (11466) and JVG (11478) (Airliners.sk; Bratislava, 5 July 2019)

Alliance Airlines steadily continues taking up new Fokkers in the fleet. VH-NUO (11529) was seen  making a test flight at Norwich and left the next day for active service down under (Graham Reeve; Norwich, 17 June 2019)