Fokker F.IX

The Fokker F.IX was an airliner developed in the Netherlands in the late 1920s to give KLM an aircraft for regular services to the Dutch East Indies, a larger machine than the F.VII that had let the airline open an air mail service. KLM ordered it on 5 September 1928. It was Fokker's largest three-engined monoplane, in the usual Fokker layout of a high-wing cantilever monoplane with wooden wings, a welded steel tube fuselage under fabric and a fixed tailskid undercarriage, with two pilots side by side in an enclosed cockpit and up to 18 passengers on European services, only four to six on the Far East route. The first example, PH-AGA, had three Gnome-Rhone Jupiter radials and made its maiden flight on 26 August 1929. A second, PH-AFK, ordered in May 1930 with a longer nose and a cabin for up to 20, won a public comfort prize at the 1930 Paris Air Show. The Great Depression postponed the Indies plans and the market vanished, though Czechoslovakia used a licence-built version as a bomber.