THE VFW 614 FOKKER PROJECT AND THE ROMANIAN AERONAUTICAL INDUSTRY IN THE 1970s

Abstract

n a ‘70s meeting of the Socialist Republic of Romania’s (RSR) Defense Council, Nicolae Ceausescu decided to have Romanians build a short-courier aircraft capable of ensuring passenger traffic, domestic and foreign, over short distances. Based on these indications, a contact was designed and several offers were obtained for the joint construction of such an aircraft: the British company "BAC" for an aircraft to be designed and developed at the request of the Romanian side, the British company "Hawker Siddeley, for the HS 748 aircraft, already manufactured in a military version, subject to obtaining the approval of the English government, the French company “SNIAS”, for the Nord-262-Fragatte aircraft which did not meet the Romanian requirements and, finally, from the West German company VFW Fokker, initially for the F. 98 aircraft, manufactured in the Netherlands, and then for the VFW 614 aircraft, both of which were introduced in Bucharest in September 1972 and May 1973, respectively. In the following study, the evolution of the negotiations with the West German side and the causes of the final failure in taking over the VFW-614 model for Romanian domestic production are presented and analyzed