On this day in aviation history, 70 years ago (November 24, 1955), the first flight of the Fairchild F-27 took place. The F-27 was a version of the Fokker F27 “Friendship” — a twin-engined turboprop airliner. Fairchild Hiller built their F-27 under license in the United States, alongside a stretched version, the FH-227. The Fokker F27 began life as a design study in 1950, known as the P275. This concept had a capacity for 32 passengers and was powered by two Rolls-Royce “Dart” turboprops. Dutch government funding provided assistance for the aircraft’s development, and the P275’s evolution into the F27 was eventually completed.
After the prototype Fokker F27s began flight testing, an agreement was signed with Fairchild that would allow the F27 design to be built as the F-27 in the United States. Ironically, the Fairchild variant would be the first to be manufactured and also enter service with West Coast Airlines in 1958. Within the US, numerous operators flew the F-27, including Air South, Hughes Airwest, Allegheny Airlines, Aloha Airlines, Bonanza Air Lines, Horizon Air, Ozark Air Lines, Pacific Air Lines, Piedmont Airlines, and Wien Air Alaska.
Fairchild’s stretched F-27 variant, the FH-227E, had a crew of two and a capacity for 44 to 52 passengers (or 11,200 pounds of payload). Two Rolls-Royce “Dart” RDa.7 Mk 532-7L turboprop engines, each with 2,300 shaft horsepower, powered the aircraft. FH-227s would cruise at 270 miles per hour, and could attain a maximum speed of 294. The Fairchild FH-227E had a range of 570 nautical miles and a service ceiling of 28,000 feet. During the aircraft’s production run, Fairchild built 128 F-27s and 78 FH-227s. A handful of F-27s survive today in museums or airparks the world over. The Hagerstown Aviation Museum, in Maryland, has been reassembling a 1959 F-27F variant that was recently donated to the collection.
