Hello, my name is Paul Stewart my journey around Australia continues checking out unique aircraft and today
I'm at Port Macquarie Airport where I'm going to be flying to Brisbane with Alliance in a Fokker 70
And they've only ever made 47 of these aircraft because the manufacturer went bankrupt
But I understand it's otherwise a pretty good aircraft, but first, let me show you around their brand new terminal.
The ten million dollar upgrade to the airport was only completed last month and it's really impressive
Here's the check-in area which I skipped as I had already printed off my boarding pass at home and I trundled onto security which was
pretty painless.
Air side you're immediately at the departure gate and there's plenty of chairs and there's also free Wi-Fi,
although powerpoints were sparse. For the size of the airport,
there was a reasonably sized cafe as well as the usual airport bits and bobs including this model 747
Although I contained myself to only buy a cup of coffee.
After a bit of a wait our aircraft arrived. This particular Fokker 70 was built in
1996 and is painted in the 100 years first England to Australia aerial flight livery
Which as you can imagine, celebrates the hundredth anniversary of the first flight between the two countries.
In 1919 the Australian government offered 10,000 pounds and these four guys spent 135 hours in the air over
27 days in a modified Vickers Vimy bomber which is now on display at Adelaide Airport.
It's amazing to consider that technology has progressed to the stage
now where an aircraft can fly between the two nations daily to Perth and in a few years
they'll be flying nonstop to the East Coast probably in Airbus A350-1000s. And
back to our aircraft type, the F 70. As
well as having an awkward name for the english-speaking world Fokker has an
Incredibly rich history reaching back to World War One where the Red Baron flew one of these as did Charles Kingsford Smith
when he crossed the Pacific Ocean in the Southern Cross.
Even the Dutch King flew in the F70 as a KLM first officer for 21 years
although that was all kept secret until recently and Fokker also assembled F-16 fighter jets under licence from General Dynamic.
Wikipedia's page on the company was a fascinating read.
Anyway inside the seats are all in a two three layout and they're reasonably old seats
Which means that they're actually quite wide. I didn't have a ruler with me
But they did seem very wide and I thought were all pretty comfy.
I sat down towards the back mostly because I wanted to get a view of the engines
although just be careful not to sit in the last two rows as the
view is either blocked by the engine or there is no window at all.
Just briefly, here's my seat beginning with the overhead air vent
which is useful if you like a steady flow of air running through what's left of your hair and in front is the table and
storage pocket.
The armrests seemed unnecessarily wide which I suspect it shows how old they are
and there's this pretty cool view out of the window of the Rolls Royce turbofan and the wing.
Had that awesome realization when the door closed and the seats next to you are still empty and we taxied out.
Obviously if you're not a huge fan of engine noises sit as far forward as possible
Although I personally didn't mind it. The wings flaps extended a little to increase lift and we headed to the main runway
Port Macquarie can put on a fantastic display when you take off to the north
Although obviously not today because of the smoke and a limited view due to the wing and engine
Check out my Qantas Dash-8 videos for better views out of Port Mac and I will link to those below.
Now let's get back to the history books and look at the F70 which is essentially just a stretched F100.
In the post-war period Fokker built the successful turboprop F27 friendship and the jet-powered
F28 Fellowship and by the 1980s it was time to replace them.
They started developing two new aircraft, the turboprop f50 and then the jet
F100 but as always happens in aviation, the programs were far more expensive than anticipated.
The F100 was launched in 1986 and was initially quite successful
So they committed to the shorter F70, which is what I flew in today.
They were bailed out by the Dutch government in the late
1980s and thN the F 70 was launched in 1993, although by that time the financial problems were well-established
And there were now more competitors.
After only
47 of the F70S were built, their relationship with parent company Daimler-Benz fell through as they decided to concentrate on cars and Fokker went
bankrupt.
The F 70 is considered to be a sturdy aircraft and around half of those 47 remain flying today.
Alliance, the airline who run today's aircraft on behalf of Virgin Australia,
have eleven of them and they're actually the biggest operator in the world.
There was talk of one stage of the production line being restarted for the F 70 and 100
Although that's fallen through probably in part because there's now more competition even from the likes of Bombardier.
After we've reached a steady cruising altitude of around eight and a half thousand meters and flying at eight hundred
Kilometres an hour, a small snack of a turkey and cranberry sandwich was offered which was fine for a 44 minute flight.
Otherwise I had to sit back and enjoy the view as we flew along the coastline and I think below me now is the town
of the Yamba.
We flew directly over the Gold Coast
so those sitting on the left would have got a great view of Surfers Paradise and flew just south of Stradbroke Island
Which you should be able to see now in the distance.
The approache into Brisbane was av geek heaven with mostly clear skies
But a few clouds just to keep it interesting and the constant fiddling with the throttle was music to my ears.
I will edit through parts of the landing as it goes on for a while and I wanted to show you more footage at the
Airport, although I'll upload the full unedited landing in a separate video and a link to that below.
From the perspective of reviewing the flight, look it was fine.
The seats were comfy and the crew were friendly as I mentioned before it's fairly noisy at the rear of their aircraft
so if that's an issue sit further forward, but otherwise
These jets are always going to be quieter overall and smoother than the turboprops that also fly on this route.
An interesting design feature of this aircraft are the air brakes that extend out at the tail
which you can just make out on this F 70 arriving into Brisbane that I inadvertently captured while gawking at
this 747. They kind of remind me of the air brakes on the F-86 saber or the BAE 146.
We deplaned the aircraft in Brisbane via the apron which is always fun for an avgeek.
And here's one last glimpse at our aircraft in this unique livery.
There were heaps of F 70's and 100's at Brisbane and this particular F70 here is painted pink to raise awareness for the Breast
Cancer Network Australia, and then here's the standard Alliance livery on this longer F100 and finally if you enjoyed my video
Please give it a thumbs up and check out my channel for many more aviation videos from around Australia in the world. Thanks for watching