Full review Just Flight’s Fokker F70 & F100 Professional

Can lightning strike in the same place twice? Just Flight’s F28 release a few years back really enthralled me as a still new to airliner flying virtual pilot. The combination of simplicity, handling, some really good built in features, and the type of places you could realistic visit worldwide with the F28 really captured my enthusiasm and attention. To this day, its probably still my favourite to go back to and fly even though others capture my attention all the time. When Just Flight announced that they’d be following the F28 up with its successors, the F70 and F100, I was overjoyed. Now, more than three years later we finally have the new jets in our virtual hangars. Does it live up to the expectations? Is it really the same thing or are we comparing apples to oranges here? Let’s have a look.

A bit of history

Swissair was a launch customer taking delivery in a ceremony on February 29, 1988

Netherland’s based Fokker announced in 1983 that it was going to produce a new version of the Fokker 28 regional jet. The new design was stretched by just over 18 feet, it was re-engined with Rolls Royce Tay high bypass-ratio turbofan engines, the wings and tailplane were redesigned and enlarged, and the flight deck was significantly modernized with a Rockwell Collins flight instrument system, new autopilot and auto thrust system, CAT III autoland and various other modern features. In short, Fokker sought to bring the F28 up to the then modern standards of the time while responding to needs of a design that could seat up to 122 in maximum density configuration. The new aircraft was called the Fokker 100 while a shortened model, the Fokker 70, was introduced later in production.

Major customers for the type included launch partner Swissair as well as American Airlines, TAM, KLM and USAir. Financial troubles within Fokker itself doomed the aircraft with the company going bankrupt in 1996 with production ending in 1997.

A series of shocks to the aviation industry followed with the September 11 attacks and the Great Recession of 2008 seeing many of these aircraft retired from their mainline operators. Despite this, the Fokker jets found service elsewhere in the world and are still used regularly in places like Australia with Qantas Link and Alliance still flying some. They have been gradually replaced by Embraer E-Jet aircraft and their time is gradually coming to an end.

Features and systems

Just Flight have brought their usual approach to airliner design with…