Remembering Germany's last homegrown airliner attempt

France and the United Kingdom were always big builders of airliners, a tradition which continued after World War Two. In West Germany, however, the picture was different.

Just one jetliner was developed there after the war, the VFW 614, which made its maiden flight in July 1971. The innovative regional jet was a commercial flop and only 16 were sold. The program, canceled in 1978, still ranks as an important milestone for Germany on its way to becoming a major partner in the successful pan-European Airbus program.

But the last big German attempt to build an airliner started in the late 1990s. It reached both its high point and end 20 years ago.

Corporate airfield in focus

For years, Oberpfaffenhofen — a small, corporate airfield south of Munich — had been the home of civil aircraft manufacturer Dornier Luftfahrt, offspring of the famous 1920s Dornier that once built the legendary Do-X flying boat.

From 1988 on, the regional aircraft-maker was run as a subsidiary of carmaker Daimler Benz, which also took over Fokker in the Netherlands and aimed to merge them into an arm for regional aircraft. After this attempt failed, US company Fairchild Aviation took over in 1996 and rebranded the company as Fairchild Dornier.

At the time, mostly the Dornier 228 turboprop and its successor Dornier 328 were built here, while Fairchild Dornier swiftly brought out a 328JET version of the latter after its takeover.

Big vision

In 1998, the German-American company revealed some bold plans at the ILA air show in Berlin. It wanted to create a whole family of regional jets. The company showed models for a 428JET, a 528JET, a 728JET and a 928JET.

Four years later, on March 21, 2002, Fairchild Dornier had the big reveal for its regional jet 728JET. The curtain fell, allowing a full view of a slightly chubby-looking aircraft. Despite much hoopla, nothing actually was as it seemed that day. "When we hit the red button to reveal the aircraft, I knew it was basically an empty shell, unable to fly," Nico Buchholz, who was then the chief procurement officer for all aircraft purchases at Lufthansa, told the author.

Lufthansa desperately needed new planes in the 70-seater category and had placed the decisive launch order for 60 728JETs plus 60 options in April 1999. That gave the project some much-needed credibility. But at the reveal, Buchholz already knew the contract could never be fulfilled.

"For me this rollout was a sad event, as I was aware of what was about to happen,” he said. Less than two weeks after the reveal, Fairchild Dornier had to file for insolvency. Several attempts to revive the 728JET and possibly other members of the envisioned aircraft family like the 928JET, on which Lufthansa was also keen, all failed. Not a single airframe ever got remotely close to being airworthy.

High expectations

Before the collapse, expectations were high for Fairchild Dornier. At the time, the market was ripe and inflated market projections heated up expectations. The company aimed for sales of up to 500 728JETs. It had a fairly impressive order book on paper, comprising of 125 firm orders (among them 60 from Lufthansa and 50 from the leasing company GECAS) plus 164 options, worth $11.7 billion (€10.6 billion).

"The aircraft looked very good in its performance data and aerodynamics, especially those of the wings were ahead of their time then and would still be very good today," said Buchholz. "From the viewpoint of an engineer, the aircraft was impeccably designed. But on the other hand, from a production viewpoint, its design was catastrophic. A good engineer also has to look at production." 

The 728JET had a fairly conventional design. The slightly chubby look of the 27-meter airframe stems from the wide cabin diameter, which was shrunk from an original design that foresaw a 3.4-meter width. An important marketing argument for the company was the idea of it as a family fleet, offering airlines the flexibility of deploying basically identical aircraft of different sizes. All that with full cockpit commonality, which could be flown by the same pilots, from the 428JET (44 seats), the 528JET (55 seats) and up to the 928JET (95-110 seats) and even an 1128JET (110-120 seats).

"Fairchild Dornier wanted to offer everything to everybody and worked on too many projects at once, leading to an increasing dissipation of its energies and constant delays in their timelines,” explained Buchholz.

After the saga ended, big aircraft manufacturers from all over the world took long, hard looks at what was left in Oberpfaffenhofen to see if anything could be salvaged. No one took the plunge and committed itself to any form of takeover. But today, there are still traces of the concept.

"If you look at nose sections of the A220 or Boeing 787, you can't deny there are visual similarities. The 728 cockpit had got its specific shape by adhering to functionality and aerodynamics. That is the legacy of the Fairchild Dornier 728,” contended Buchholz.

Edited by: Arthur Sullivan