‘The Few’ is a series of titles where the focus will be on airliners that were only built or operated in a few numbers and flew for a particular airline. This book about the Farman Jabiru series, the first French monoplane airliner, is the next title in this series.
The first French monoplane was the F.3X Jabiru (later F.120), that first flew in September 1923. It immediately won the Grand Prix des Avions de Transports, held the same month. This four-engined aircraft entered service with Société Générale de Transport Ariens (SGTA, Lignes Farman) on the Paris–Brussels–Amsterdam service and later also flew on Cologne and Berlin. The Compagnie Internationale de Navigation Aérienne (CIDNA) requested a three-engined version, which became known as the F.4X Jabiru (later F.120T) and it was introduced on the air service to the Balkan and Poland. The Farman Jabiru was further developed into a series of military and civil aircraft.
After a demonstration flight in May 1925, and some trial flights in September, DDL (Danish Airlines) decided to purchase four Farman F.121s for operation on its routes and extending the network with an air service from Copenhagen via Cologne in Germany. Two of the four aircraft were built under license at the Danish Orlogsværft in Denmark. The aircraft performed well on the network of DDL but were gradually replaced by the single-engined Fokker F.VIIa, that was cheaper to operate.
This book will tell the story of the operation of the aircraft type with Compagnie Internationale de Navigation Aérienne (CIDNA), Société Générale de Transport Ariens (SGTA, Lignes Farman) and Det Danske Luftfartselskab AS (Danish Air Lines) from 1925 and onward, well-illustrated with photographs, tables, and colour profiles of several F.121s.
