hello and welcome to Adelaide Airport and my journey around Australia checking out
unique aircraft continues today on a flight from here in Adelaide to Olympic Dam
with alliance airlines in the Fokker 50 that you can see behind me now. It's
quite a rare aircraft, in fact that's the reason I've come to Adelaide to check it out.
So let's go back in time, I'll show you through check-in and then we'll go
onboard. As soon as you arrive at the airport,
don't head upstairs to departures as Alliance's check-in and bag drop area is
actually on the ground level right next to arrivals. Once you've done your
business there, it's then up to the main departure area and then you'll go
through security.
This is my first time at Adelaide Airport and I was really impressed by how modern
and spacious it was, and there were plenty of cafes open considering it
was 6:15 on a Saturday morning. A real highlight, though, were the views of the
airport apron which was a hive of activity with 737s and A320s handing off
to other capital cities. But what's unique to Adelaide are the amount of
interesting and reasonably rare aircraft! Here's a Fokker 50 and behind that is a
Virgin Fokker 100 and then further away is a 737 classic freighters and a few BAE
146 mini Jumbos. Although actually they looked like mini C5 galaxies. Boarding
was called and we headed out to see our aircraft, which for me was the first time
I'd ever seen an F50 in the metal. As in my recent videos I'll begin with some
history. After world war 2 there were literally thousands of DC-3s around
although they were quite an old design so Fokker wanted in on the action. They
developed the F27 friendship which first flew in 1955 and was incredibly
successful also being built under license in the USA by a company called
Fairchild. By the 1980s, sales were slowing down so Fokker decided to do a
major refresh to make at the F50. The fuselage and wings remained mostly
unchanged although the main improvements were new pratt & whitney canada pw 124
engines, little winglets and they added an extra front wheel for extra stability.
Inside the main improvement was a glass cockpit.
More of the background story once we're in the air but let's run through the
seats which are all in a 2-2 layout.
Overhead are individual vents which is something I really appreciate and I'm
sure most miners would as well if they've just walked out of 45 degree
weather at Olympic Dam. There was pretty old-school levels of room, which means
that there actually is a decent leg room! There's the usual fold-out table etc and the
view outside of the Pratt & Whitney engines as well as the landing gear.
Unfortunately I was sitting too far back to really see their props although he is
footage of the engine starting up on my return flight from Olympic Dam.
We took off to the runway and in the background you'll see a Qantas Dash 8 Q 300
which is actually one of the aircraft that killed off the F50 and another,
little Fokker that you saw at the start of the video.
We were cleared for takeoff and I must admit this something very satisfying
about watching the landing gear fold up as we head off out over the ocean I'll
skip through some of the takeoff although I'll include a link to the full
takeoff footage in a separate video.
The views climbing up through the clouds on our way to a cruising altitude of
20,000 feet but pretty impressive and a complimentary water was brought around
although I must admit I was a little surprise that there were no snacks.
I suppose they're used to flying miners out here rather than delicate
Millennials from Sydney like myself. As we flew just east of Whayalla I'll
continue with some more history. The former Australian airline Ansett had an
important role here as they were actually one of the launch partners of
the F50, with other being the German airline DLT....
... which is usually just a abbreviated to DLT. It seems appropriate that an
Australian airline, so Alliance Airlines, is one of the last to keep flying them
in fact Alliance have a large fleet of Fockers including the F70 and 100's
and I've uploaded a vlog on board the F 70 from Port Macquarie to Brisbane which
is on my youtube channel.
There's this cool little analog clock right at the front of the cabin and in
case you were wondering what the toilet inside of F50 looks like, well wonder no
more. There's this single one up front just
behind the flight deck. Now unfortunately the views outside were a little drab due
to some high-altitude cloud although you could still make out some of the rich
bright red soil. In fact the Australian outback really does have this unique
kind of dystopian look with incredible harshness and unique different colors.
It's like you're flying over a Mad Max film which I suppose makes sense since
it was filmed out here or maybe the planet Mars.
Just south of Woomera, we started our descent down into Olympic Dam which by
the way is essentially an airport built for and by a mining company called BHP.
Just before we touched down you'll get a glimpse of a mine in the distance and
according to their own website there is a considerable amount of copper, gold,
silver and uranium out there. One of the really beautiful things about the
Australian outback is the rich red and color of the soil, and for my
international subscribers in particular, it has that color because the soil is
rich in iron. But that also rusts so it looks great but as anyone who had bought
a Russian car knows, a pile of rust isn't really good for anything which is why
this lands aren't really good for growing crops. Now back to this
particular aircraft and why it's no longer built. Unfortunately Fokker
designed this at the same time as the F 70 and 100 twins and it seems that they over
reached with both programs being far more expensive than planned. This aircraft was
still launched in 1987 and the Dutch government rescued them financially at
one stage but eventually their main source of money from Daimler Benz
pulled their plug as they focused on cars. The other issue was that there was
now a lot more competition including from ATR, the dash 8 and the Saab 340 so
sadly in 1997 Fokker went bankrupt and production was ceased.
There was actually talk of restarting production with an Indian company called
Hindustan showing some interest but alas that fell through. It was sad to see such
a significant aircraft see at its final days in that fashion
but I guess that's business and I do consider myself lucky to have had a
chance to fly one of these as they're rapidly all being retired.
Now I usually review these flights although to be honest this is more of a
vlog to fly in an interesting aircraft than to actually review it but look it
was perfectly fine. The seat was comfy and the crew were friendly we left and
arrived on time although I wouldn't have complained if we got a snack or a hot
caffeinated beverage since it was an O 6:40 a.m. departure but anyway I
survived. Here's some impressive camerawork, mostly of my jeans and
another view of our aircraft before the view of the terminal at Olympic Dam
International Airport. If you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up and
there are plenty more aviation videos on my channel both from around Australia
and the world and more coming so make sure you subscribe and also don't forget
to check me out on Instagram and Facebook thanks for watching.