Fokker F.25

The Fokker F.25 Promotor, first flown in 1946, was a single-engined, twin-boomed, four-seat passenger monoplane with a pusher engine at the rear of a central nacelle. It was of wooden construction with a retractable nosewheel undercarriage, and unusually the pilot sat at the front left with all three passengers on a bench seat behind him; as an air ambulance it could carry a stretcher patient loaded through a hatch in the nose. The car dealer Frits Diepen had had a twin-boom aircraft built during the Second World War that emerged postwar as the unsuccessful Difoga 421, and he then contracted Fokker to design a new aircraft of similar layout, ordering 100 for air taxi and charter use. The first example flew on 20 October 1946 and was shown at the Paris Air Show that year. A Lycoming O-435-A piston engine of 140 kW gave a maximum speed of 217 km/h. Production stopped in 1949 after 20 had been completed, as the F.25 could not compete with cheap surplus military aircraft and Fokker needed its capacity for the S.11 Instructor trainer.