UPDATED: August 2026
The mid-80s was the heyday of the regional propliner with a wide variety of excellent designs being produced in the 20-50 seat range across Europe (by ATR, BAE, Dornier, Fokker, Saab and Shorts) plus Embraer in Brasil and DeHavilland Canada in Canada. The ATR has survived to be the outstanding success of this crop but many of them received creditable sales during the 80s and 90s prior to the RJ revolution. The Fokker 50 didn’t do as well as the Saab 340, DHC-8, ATR-42 or EMB-120 but it certainly did better than the ATP and Saab 2000, with 214 aircraft built. Those are surprisingly decent sales figures considering it failed to crack the all important US market and Fokker itself collapsed in 1996/97.
Impressively the aircraft served almost worldwide, aside from North America. It could be seen in Australia, Brasil, Colombia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, Kenya, Sudan as well as almost the whole of Europe. In later years the type saw service in other exotic locations from Mongolia to Iran and by late 2022 there were still over 70 frames in service.
THE REAL THING
The F50 unsurprisingly looks like a sports version of the Fokker F27 it was based off of. The most obvious differences were the new nosegear and engines, complete with new props.
THE MOULDS
JC WINGS (2008)
The Fokker 50 benefitted from JC Wings’ appearance as a brand in 400 scale being one of a range of excellent little regional types that they produced in their early years. For more on JC Wings early history see my post here:
Unfortunately almost as soon as production had begun JC Wings swung away from a lot of the more unusual and smaller moulds it had produced to focus on modern twinjets. This has left the F50 with only 16 releases produced in two small bursts. The first 11 models were made from 2008-2010 with another 5 appearing in 2012/2013. That means it has incredibly been 13 years since the last F50 was made in the scale, which is a real shame. Most of the released models are quite hard to find nowadays.
Unusually all the releases have been produced under the JC Wings brand name and none have been made by its partner Gemini Jets. Presumably that is largely because the type never broke the US, however it is surprising that no European examples have been made by Gemini considering the potential release options – see later.
The mould itself is excellent and captures the shape of the aircraft beautifully. The only minor detractor is that sometimes the nosegear placement can be a little poor (although this looks like it was improved on later releases).
To date I have only been able to acquire 4 of the 16 models made and sadly I have been informed that the mould is no longer available for use so it appears that it is not possible for JC Wings to produce any further F50s.
WISHLIST
Given the low production numbers in 400 scale there is a lot of potential for new F50 releases to be made, almost all of which feature major national carriers. Click below to see a list of 22 obvious choices. Perhaps 3D Design Deck are a possible future manufacturer of the F50?
