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Aviation History
1988
1988 - 3114.PDF
The Fokker 100 at work Passengers disembark from one of Swissair's Fokker 100s at Zurich Fokker's new 100 started service with launch customer Swissair a year late, but it has been working hard for nearly six months. Has it been worth the wait? David Learmount goes to Zurich to find out. Pictures by Gordon Bain. Swissair's first Fokker 100 entered service 3| years after the airline took the decision to place the launch order. After six months' operation of the type Swis sair should be able to assess whether its intended role for the Fokker 100 is still commercially valid, and whether the aero plane is performing that role reliably and cost-effectively. Swissair is adamant that its decision on the size and category of airliner was correct. The Fokker 100's 85 seats (in three-class cabin format) is what Swissair wanted. The airline's next-smallest aeroplane is the McDonnell Douglas MD-81—a 130-seater in Swissair hands—which is too big and costly for many of the European short-haul routes the airline had in mind. Swissair's complete, eight-aeroplane Fokker order will have been delivered by the year's end, and by that time also the last of the carrier's fleet of DC-9-30s and -50s will have retired. The question most often asked of this faithful McDonnell Douglas customer (MD- 11 launch customer, DC-10s, MD-80s, and years of DC-9s) is why did it not choose the MD version of the DC-9-30, the MD-87? The first answer is that it was not on firm offer at the time the order was placed with Fokker. But the important answer, Swissair says, is that it would not have changed its mind anyway, because the MD-87 is heavier and more expensive, both to buy and to oper ate. Swissair's charter subsidiary, CTA, has since ordered and put into operation a fleet of MD-87s. The parent company explains that the charter organisation needs the -87's longer range, and can guarantee sales of its seats to the travel trade, whereas the Fokker 100 has to be able to operate profitably on the potentially thinner schedules at which it is aimed. In its original assessments of oper ating costs on the route network mapped out for the new aeroplane, the Fokker 100 worked out $1-5 million a year cheaper to run than the MD-87. In practice, the new Fokker is showing itself to be slightly more efficient, both in engine and airframe terms, than the manufacturer's figures, reducing fuel consumption by about three per cent, despite a slightly higher-than-predicted weight. In his assessment of the Fokker 100 in Swissair service, the airline's head of engineering and maintenance, Willi Schurter, starts encouragingly: "The Fokker 100 has proved to be an efficient and envi ronmentally acceptable aircraft. All major performance objectives have been achieved. In this respect Fokker has done a fine job." But it is not entirely sweetness and light for Fokker. Schurter continues: "The known delivery delays had obviously negative consequences [for which Fokker paid compensation], also Fokker's ability to correct discovered discrepancies, in either technical or production items, needs improvement". He puts the matter in propor tion with a summing-up: "All in all, Fokker matches the general support and performance of other aircraft manufacturers when starting a new programme". Swissair had considerable influence on the Fokker 100's development, taking it from being simply a stretched, re-engiried F.28 (which was Fokker's first offer) to the somewhat more sophisticated digitally- cockpitted machine now hauling Swissair passengers. The carrier's divisional manager engineering projects, Peter Habliitzel, remarks that he is "very pleased with how we could work together with the design engineers. But there seemed to be a lack of communication between design people and production people. I saw some people adjust ing the design to the aeroplane". But he says 20 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 29 October 1988
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