Metro / Merlin Legacy

The Fairchild Metro was created in the late 1960s by legendary aircraft designer Ed Swearingen specifically to serve the emerging regional airline market.

The Metro was developed as a stretched version of Swearingen's Merlin II corporate turboprop, which was introduced in 1965. The Merlin was Swearingen's first in-house design and incorporated many key features of the top corporate aircraft of the time.

Regular production of the Metro began in 1971, the same year Fairchild acquired Swearingen. The airplane achieved immediate success. The Metro was the regional airliner first used by many of the most successful regional airlines of the 1970s and 1980s, including Skywest Airlines, Horizon Airlines, Comair and Wings West, which later became one of the carriers operating as American Eagle.

In addition to the Metro, Fairchild also began marketing a corporate version of the Metro airframe called the Merlin IV. Over the years, a total of 331 Merlins, 117 Merlin IVs and 605 Metros would be built.