If there is one aircraft type that has a long and rich connection with the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, then it must be the Fokker F28 Fellowship. For decades the Saskatoon John G. Diefenbaker International Airport was the home of the largest stored fleet of Fokker F28s in the world.
Back in the mid 1980s Saskatoon’s NorCanAir received a permit from the United States for a scheduled flight service between Saskatchewan and the United States. This permit stated that the flight could only be carried out with an aircraft up to a certain weight. NorCanAir only operated propellor aircraft (like the Convairliners and Fairchild F27s) at the time, but the management wisely decided that the new route to Minneapolis required a jet airliner. The only jet that fell within the weight limits of the permit was the Fokker F28-1000 (and -3000) Fellowship.
Fokker Aircraft was contacted and together the search started to look for available aircraft on the market. Fokker knew that a couple of F28s that were operated by the private Italian airliner “Itavia” had been stored for some time. Although Itavia operated successfully for over 30 years, it didn’t survive the aftermath of the infamous Itavia Flight 870 crash.
The two Fokker F28s were the C-GTEO (cn 11991, ex I-TIDI) and the C-GTUU (cn 11006, ex I-TIDB). They were ferried to Saskatoon, where both aircraft were prepared for service. The C-GTUU’s interior was quite dated with 1970s flowers and what not, so it quickly was affectionately nicknamed the “Ugly, Ugly”, as a reference to its registration.
When both F28s entered service, NorCanAir realized that these gems could not only operate it’s international flights to the USA, but also, it’s charter flights to gravel bush strips like Point North and small mining towns like Uranium City more efficiently than the aging propellor driven Convairs and Fairchild F27s. The decision was made to standardize the fleet to F28’s and that in the future the only thing driven by propellors were boats.
A third F28 was found in Australia, where the Department of Aviation had put their VH-ATE (cn 11082) up for sale. But before it was delivered to Canada, NorCanAir had been purchased by Time Air out of Lethbridge. VH-ATE became the C-GTAH, with the letters TA referring to Time Air.
The Fokker F28 Fellowship also became the first jet powered aircraft in the Time Air Fleet. The versatility of the jet was well appreciated, and the airline went full in on the Fokker F28, buying many F28 from USAir, who replaced them with brand new Fokker 100s.
In 1993 Time Air changed its name to Canadi<n Regional, after it signed a contract with Canadi<n International Airlines to operate as a feeder. The contract stated that the airline could only operate aircraft with a max seating capacity of 69, in order not to compete with the main airline. This means that the 65 seat Fokker F28-1000 was a perfect fit. The F28 fuselage was even wide enough to fit the standard Canadi<n International business class seats so that Time Air (dba Canadi<n Regional) could also offer the profitable business class product.
Canadi<n Regional operated the F28 on its international flights as well as on the charter flights to unpaved airstrips in the North. This is the reason why sometimes the ground crews at Chicago O’Hare could see the old F28 arrive covered in mud!
No other aircraft type could do what the F28 did and more F28-1000 were added to the growing fleet. Soon Canadi<n Regional was the third largest airline in Canada (after Air Canada and Canadi<n International Airlines) and the largest operator of the Fokker F28-1000 in the world.
CRA (Canadi<n Regional) intended to operate the type well into the 2010s, but after the attack on world trade centre 9/11 Canadi<n International ended up in a financial crisis and was forced to merge with Air Canada by the Canadian government.
Although Air Canada did apply a hybrid livery to several F28s, the decision was made to retire the aircraft type from the fleet. The whole fleet was flown to it’s main F28 maintenance base Saskatoon, where once the F28 success story began and put up for sale.
Selling the F28s proved to be difficult, due to the age of the aircraft, the high fuel consumption and noise that didn’t meet new noise regulations in many parts of the world. In the early days of Fokker F28 storage at Saskatoon, a handful of Fellowships did find a buyer and were sold to keep flying for a few more years, but for much of the fleet, the future started to look bleak.
By 2010 most of the “storage maintenance” had stopped and some aircraft received damage from weather, birds or cramped parking. The owners of the F28s were now more focused on selling parts of the F28, enabling F28s in other parts of the world to keep flying.
In meantime, aircraft enthusiasts from Alberta recognised the important role the F28 played in Canada’s aviation history and decided it was time to start a campaign to safe at least one for a museum. The owner of the fleet appreciated the initiative and offered one complete F28 (C-FTAV. cn11106) to the Time Air Historical Society for a friendly price. C-FTAV was once painted in Time Air’s jubilee colour scheme. Two other ones (cn 11050 & 11099) were also moved to Alberta.
In meantime, the rest of the F28s in Saskatoon started to deteriorate to the point that the airport authorities wanted them gone. They were in the way of the airport’s snow removal equipment, the paint jobs were faded to the point that they became eyesores, and they attracted a large quantity of birds, like pigeons, who made nests in them.
In September of 2018 the owners decided to please the airport authorities by scrapping the 6 F28s C-FCRW (cn 11029), the C-FCRP (cn 11037), the C-FCRC (cn 11044), the C-FOCR (cn 11063), the C-FTAS (cn 11098) and the good old C-GTEO (cn 11991). The remaining 12 were pushed tightly on the grass beside the hangar of the owner.
The airport authorities were still not completely satisfied with this solution, because it didn’t solve the problems of the birds and the image of the airport. In the last week of August 2026, action was taken and the remaining F28s were swiftly cleaned up and trucked away as scrap metal. These were the C-FCRB (cn11107, last F28-1000 built), C-GNCR (cn 11034 ex F-BUTI), C-GKCR (cn11101), C-FZCR (cn 11054), C-FCRI (cn 11043), C-FQCR (cn 11036), C-GLCR (cn 11105), C-FCRM (11035), C-FPCR (11096), C-FFCR (cn 11095), C-FXTA (cn 11064) and finally the C-GTAH (cn 11082) was the last F28 to have its wings clipped.
These F28s were such a permanent feature on the airport for so long, that the new reality of them all gone will take some time to get used to. With the last remains of scrap metal leaving the airport gate ends the last chapter of the rich history of F28s in Saskatoon. A history that started many decades ago with a small Saskatoon based airline with huge ambitions.
