Operational History
By 1991, Fokker had produced 70 units and had orders for 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 100QC. A shorter version was introduced in 1993 as a replacement for the earlier F28, known as the Fokker 70, which removed 4.70 m (15.42 ft) of the fuselage and reduced seating to 80. Studies on the 130 seat Fokker 130 and the Fokker 100QC (freighter) did not reach further stages of development. A Fokker 100EJ (Executive Jet) was introduced in 2003 as a conversion from used Fokker 100 aircraft.
Although the design was a success in the marketplace, Fokker continued to lose money due to mismanagement. Eventually their parent company, Daimler Benz Aerospace, shut them down. Fokker collapsed in 1996 and wound up production in early 1997. There had been some discussion about the company being purchased by Bombardier, but the plans fell through.
An Amsterdam-based group, Rekkof Restart (Rekkof is Fokker spelled backwards) negotiated to re-open the Fokker 70 and 100 lines in 1999, but the deal never completed. Stork B.V. acquired the maintenance business for the aircraft and operated it under the name "Fokker Aviation".
Like any number of designs, the 70/100 was being increasingly squeezed from below by stretched versions of the Bombardier and Embraer regional jets, which also killed off plans for the Fairchild 728JET/928JET and an unnamed design from ATR. A proposed stretch version called the Fokker 130 was never built.
Read more about this topic: Fokker 100
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)