Pan Am Fokker 100!
Fokker 100 PR-OAF (msn 11415) was involved in a landing incident on 28 March 2014 when a hydraulic failure kept the nose landing gear from dropping. AVIANCA (its operator at the time) discarded the aircraft, opting to use the spare parts to keep the remaining Fokker 100s airworthy.
At some point in time before its demise in 2019, AVIANCA sold the fuselage to an unknown third party, and the Fokker was kept in a Brasilia hangar, where the aircraft was forgotten for a long time.
It was not until 18 June 2020 when AeroJota, an aviation classifieds website, published an advertisement on its website saying the fuselage was for sale.
The customer who bought the aircraft after the advertisement emerged, it was later discovered, was a group called Pan Am Experience Brazil, also located in Brasilia. Mid-August 2020, a convoy of trucks took the fuselage of PR-OAF to the parking lot of the city’s Igreja Batista Central de Brasília (a church), where the project is headquartered.
Pan Am Experience Brazil aims to bring guests back to a golden era of aviation. Pan American World Airways, better known as Pan Am, is a classic example of that era, setting standards people still talk about to this day.
Behind the Brazilian venture is Ricardo Espindola, whose passion for aviation has been a lifelong one. The Brazilian entrepreneur, who is a pastor at the Baptist church and also a chef, has his own cooking TV show at a local TV station. He says the project was born after a church fair, where he mixed his two passions: cooking and aviation. Initially they used a mockup and made it a real aviation experience: “Boarding passes, check-in, media system, equipment that made the ‘aircraft’ vibrate.”
Due to COVID-19 that mockup was removed in July and they were thinking of acquiring a Boeing 737, which Pan Am used to operate. But, as fate would have it, Ricardo saw the AeroJota advertisement and bought the Fokker, despite Pan Am never having operated the type. The Fokker was already transported to its new location by mid-August and work started immediately to change its colours. One picture shows the Pan Am logo already applied on the tail, and an artist's impression shows a potential full colour scheme for the Fokker.
Pan Am Experience Brazil hopes that the Fokker will be ready for “service” in 2021.
