Fokker F.XVIII

The Fokker F.XVIII was an airliner produced in the Netherlands in the early 1930s, essentially a scaled-up version of the Fokker F.XII intended for long-distance flights. Like its predecessor, it was a conventional high-wing cantilever monoplane with fixed tailwheel undercarriage. Its cabin could seat 12 passengers, or four-to-six on seats convertible to sleeping berths. Only five were built, all for KLM, and registered as PH-AIO, PH-AIP, PH-AIQ, PH-AIR and PH-AIS, all of which were named after birds. Used by KLM on its Amsterdam-Batavia route, the F.XVIII became celebrated in the Netherlands due to two especially noteworthy flights. In December 1933, one aircraft (registration PH-AIP, Pelikaan - "Pelican") was used to make a special Christmas mail flight to Batavia, completing the round trip in a flight time of 73 hours 34 minutes. The following Christmas, another F.XVIII (registration PH-AIS, Snip - "Snipe") made a similar flight to Curaçao in 55 hours 58 minutes after having been specially re-engined for the journey. In October 1936, the F.XVIIIs were withdrawn from the service to Batavia, replaced by the Douglas DC-2. KLM sold PH-AIQ and PH-AIR to Československá Letecká Společnost where they were re-registered as OK-AIQ and OK-AIR. They used them on their Prague-Vienna-Berlin route until 1938. OK-AIQ then went to Commercial Aviation Corporation at Lydda, Palestine (now Ben Gurion Airport) in December 1938 where it became VQ-PAF, crashing there on 13 January 1939. The wreck remained on the airfield until 1948 when it was taken on charge by the Israeli Air Force but never re-built and it was subsequently scrapped in Israel. OK-AIR was taken on-charge by Deutsche Lufthansa in 1938 as D-AAIR. Its fate is unrecorded - probably pressed into Luftwaffe service and destroyed during WW2. PH-AIP Pelikaan went to Air Tropique, a front for the Spanish Republican government which used it as a transport during the Spanish Civil War. It was transferred onto the French register

Summary from Wikipedia, photo via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA.