Reaching Uncharted Corners of the Globe in a Fokker F.VII

Ride along on a Microsoft Flight Simulator journey through history in one of the world’s first civilian airliners.

Patrick Chovanec

Friday, March 22, 2024 at 12:51 PM ET

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The F.VII’s fuselage was fabric stretched over a steel-tube frame. [Courtesy: Patrick Chovanec]

Key Takeaways:

The Fokker F.VII was a groundbreaking early civilian airliner, originally single-engine and later more widely adopted as a three-engine variant, crucial for establishing initial commercial passenger routes.
It achieved significant fame through its use in pioneering flights, notably Richard Byrd's controversial North Pole expedition and Charles Kingsford Smith's historic first crossing of the Pacific Ocean.
Despite its contributions to early aviation and challenging flight characteristics, its fabric-and-wood construction ultimately led to its replacement by more robust all-metal airliners due to safety concerns.

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Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 I’m going to be flying the Fokker F.VII, one of the world’s first civilian airliners that blazed new paths to uncharted reaches of the globe in the hands of aviators like Richard Byrd and Charles Kingsford Smith.

Anthony Fokker was Dutch, born in the colonial East Indies. In 1910, at age 20, he moved to Germany to pursue his interest in aviation. He soon founded his own airplane company there, and during World War I it designed a number of successful and famous fighter planes for the Germans. Fokker himself was an accomplished pilot. I wrote a previous article on the Fokker Dr.I triplane, which you can check out here.