Originally Posted by WHBM

The Fairchild F-228 was a variant of the Fokker F-28 jet, I understand it was reduced in size even further. Many of the components were actually shipped over by Fokker to the Fairchild plant in Hagerstown MD (Like the other Fokker/Fairchild products, quite a lot of the structure was actually manufactured by Shorts in Belfast under subcontract), not actually built into aircraft, stored there for a while, and then sent back to Amsterdam and incorporated in later F-28s.

Fairchild then had one last go at the Fokker alliance, and ordered an initial 12 F-28s built in Amsterdam for resale in North America, just acting as sales dealer. These never sold, apart from the couple that Transair of Canada leased, the earlier ones hung around Hagerstown for years and were finally sent back to the Netherlands where they joined the later ones stored there that had never even been flown across the Atlantic. Strangely, Fokker then found it quite straightforward to sell them elsewhere in the world.

The small 50-seat jets of the late 1960s were notable sales dogs, the F-28 probably the best, and that wasn't saying much. The similar sized VFW-614 never sold a single unit of about 20 they built. The Yak-40 from the Soviet Union did quite well there, but despite much sales effort at international airshows didn't sell at all in The West. And then there was the Scott Furlong Sovereign