Aviation Historian 13
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T.Singfield - The Light Brigade
Philips’s long-serving Beech E18S PH-LPS at Croydon in the late 1950s. The fleet’s distinctive dark-green and white horizontal stripes were later added to the twin’s rudders. It is now preserved in Malaga as EC-ASJ; confusingly, the same registration is used by the Fundacion Infante de Orleans’ airworthy Beech 18 at Madrid.
Fokker F-27 Friendship PH-LIP was the centrepiece of the Vliegdienst from its acquisition in 1962, and, with its auxiliary wing-mounted fuel tanks, could comfortably manage long-range flights from Europe to the Middle East. The aircraft was sold in 1975 to become D-BAKA and was later operated by DLT and Crossair.
This way for savings in time, money and executive stress - a promotional photograph of the Philips Vliegdienst base at Eindhoven in 1969, including Fokker F-27 PH-LIP, which served the company with distinction during 1962-75, and Beech King Air PH-ILK, one of two operated by Philips during the 1970s and 1980s.
Wearing only the Philips company logo to mark its ownership, Dassault Falcon 10 PH-ILT, awaits another Vliegdienst flight. Despite the inverted numbering sequence, the Falcon 10 was in fact a development of the larger Falcon 20.
In 1967 Philips joined the jet set with the acquisition of a Dassault Falcon 20C, which would become the fifth of the company’s aircraft to wear the registration PH-LPS. After nearly two decades in Vliegdienst service, the Falcon was sold to a new German owner as D-CBNA in February 1986, and crashed in Greenland in April 2001.
Capable of carrying 14 passengers and two crew, the de Havilland D.H.114 Heron was a four-engined "stretched” version of the Dove, offering even better economics. Heron 2E PH-ILA was acquired by Philips in early 1959 and served until 1968, when it went to the USA to become N561PR and was fitted with Continental engines.
Although similar in terms of passenger-carrying capacity, the de Havilland Dove was an altogether more modern proposition than the Beech 18. Philips acquired its first Dove, PH-ILI, in 1957, the aircraft remaining in Vliegdienst service until 1967.
In the early 1960s Philips also began adding smaller twins to its roster, and in 1963 Beech Baron PH-ILP joined the fleet, only to be re-registered PH-ILB, as seen here, in 1967, to avoid callsign confusion with F-27 PH-LIP.
Delivered new to Philips in 1949, this Taylorcraft Auster J/1 Autocrat flew with the company for four years as PH-LPS, taking the registration from the first Philips aircraft, Frits Philips’s Koolhoven F.K.46. As seen here, the Auster has been preserved in its original Philips livery and is currently on display at the Aviodrome in Lelystad.
Seen here wearing the standard Philips colour scheme of a dark-green cheat line, white upper surfaces, bare-metal or grey lower fuselage and undersides, green-and-grey striped rudder and dark-green engine detail, piston-engined Beech Queen Air 65 PH-ILS was a regular visitor to the UK during its eight-year Vliegdienst service.