VFW-Fokker F28. Great, where others are too big.

The advertisement in question—pulled from a 1978 London (Ontario) International Air Show souvenir program—promotes the VFW-Fokker F28 Fellowship, a twin-engine regional jet developed jointly by the Netherlands' Fokker and Germany's VFW (Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke) starting in the mid-1960s. The tagline "Great, where others are too big" succinctly captured the aircraft's market positioning at the time: a purpose-built short-haul jet designed to serve regional routes and smaller airports that larger narrowbodies like the Boeing 727 or DC-9 could not efficiently or economically support. First flown in 1967 and entering service in 1969, the F28 carried between 65 and 85 passengers depending on variant, powered by two rear-mounted Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans—a configuration reminiscent of the BAC One-Eleven and DC-9 but scaled down for thinner routes.

For working pilots and operators, this piece of aviation memorabilia is a reminder of how the regional jet category evolved from a fragmented, nationally-driven manufacturing landscape into the consolidated duopoly-adjacent market of today. In 1978, airlines seeking capacity below mainline narrowbody size had genuine competition among the F28, the BAC One-Eleven, the Douglas DC-9-10, and eventually the emerging Bombardier and Embraer offerings. The F28 found a loyal following with carriers such as Piedmont Airlines, Air Canada's regional affiliates, Ansett, and various European and Nigerian operators, valued for its short-field performance, simple systems, and ability to operate profitably on routes with lower demand. Pilots who flew the type often recall its straightforward hydromechanical systems and analog cockpit—a stark contrast to the highly automated, fly-by-wire regional jets flying today.

The F28 lineage is also historically significant because it directly preceded the Fokker 100, a stretched, re-engined, and modernized derivative that entered service in 1988 and became a fixture of regional and short-haul mainline flying into the 1990s, flown by carriers like American Airlines, USAir, and TAT. Fokker's eventual bankruptcy in 1996, following financial difficulties and the withdrawal of Daimler-Benz Aerospace support, effectively ended Dutch commercial aircraft manufacturing and left a vacuum that was filled by Bombardier's CRJ family and Embraer's ERJ/E-Jet lines—both of which explicitly targeted the same "right-sized" niche the F28 pioneered decades earlier.

For today's professional pilots, particularly those flying modern regional jets or advising fleet planning decisions, this vintage advertisement underscores a durable truth in commercial aviation: market segmentation by aircraft size has remained a constant competitive battleground since the dawn of the jet age. The specific manufacturers and airframes change—VFW-Fokker gave way to Bombardier and Embraer, and now Airbus and Boeing's narrowbody offerings increasingly encroach on the upper end of that segment—but the underlying economic logic of matching aircraft size to route demand persists. Air show ephemera like this 1978 program advertisement serve as useful artifacts for understanding how today's regional jet market, dominated by the E175 and CRJ series in North America, descends from a lineage of purpose-built "in-between" aircraft that the F28 helped establish as a viable and necessary category in commercial aviation.