TOWER AIR

'Tower Air' was a privately owned low-fare and charter U.S. airline that operated from 1983 until 2000, when it declared bankruptcy and was liquidated. During the mid-1980s until People Express ceased operations in 1987, the airline was a main competitor of People Express, in the high-density U.S. domestic market, but it had initially begun service as an international-only airline.

Contents

History

Destinations

USA

International

Other facts of interest

Aircraft

Incidents and accidents

References

External links

History

Tower Air was co-founded, majority owned, and managed by Morris K. Nachtomi, an Israeli citizen who had immigrated to the United States. After a 30-year career with El Al, Nachtomi joined a wholesaler and tour package operator called ''Tower Travel Corporation'' in 1981 and co-founded Tower Air one year later with Zev Melamid, Mordechi Gill, and Sam Fondlier. Arthur Fondlier, son of Sam Fondlier and the Chief Financial Officer of Tower, was a passenger in first class on Pan Am flight 103. His untimely death gave Mr. Nachtomi much more freedom in management and cost-cutting.
The company won many contracts from the United States Department of Defense to transport U.S. armed forces personnel to overseas locations. It was often chartered to fly groups of Muslim pilgrims to Mecca.
Tower Air's main base of scheduled operations was John F. Kennedy International Airport in Jamaica, New York and during its peak had its own terminal (the former Eastern Airlines Terminal). It had a large focus on flights to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, becoming a major competitor of El Al and British Airways in the US-Israel market. The airlines also had several flights into France, Greece, and Brazil as well as high density domestic destinations in the New York market, including San Juan, Miami, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, Nevada. The airline was unique as being exclusively composed of Boeing 747-100 and -200 series aircraft.
Early in its history and certainly by the mid-1990s, Tower Air became notorious for poor service and questionable maintenance. By 1995 it ranked fourth in the number of complaints per mile among leading U.S. airlines. The 1997 Zagat Survey placed Tower Air 59th out of 61 ranked carriers, only edging ahead of Valujet and Aeroflot.^[1] In February 1998, the Federal Aviation Administration proposed two civil penalties totaling $276,000 for continuing to fly aircraft that required maintenance action ^[2]. The FAA successfully sought in January, 1998 to have the airline remove then-29 year old Mr. Guy Nachtomi, son of the Chairman and CEO, from the position as Vice President-Operations, in part because of the airline's maintenance, as well the junior Mr. Nachtomi's little airline experience, having worked at Twentieth Century Fox until 1994. ^[3] However, the junior Mr. Nachtomi continued service with the company in a capacity unrelated to maintenance as Vice President-Office of the Chairman. ^[3] The Department of Defense Commercial Airlift Review Board suspended Tower Air military charters from January 27 to February 12, 1999, pending an on-site review of their operations. At the same time the airline lost an arbitration brought by the Association of Flight Attendants, claiming that Tower Air had begun lodging its flight attendants in dirty Tel Aviv hotels with poor security and bed bugs.
Tower Air filed for protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy on February 29, 2000, ceased all scheduled service on May 1, 2000, and surrendered its FAA air carrier operating certificate on November 28, 2000 ^[5].

Destinations

USA

★ Las Vegas, Nevada

★ Los Angeles, California

★ Miami, Florida

★ New York City, New York (JFK – airline hub)

★ San Francisco, California

★ San Juan, Puerto Rico

International

All international service was to/from New York only.

★ Athens, Greece

★ Tel Aviv, Israel

★ Paris, France

★ Brussels, Belgium

★ Mumbai, India
From Miami to

★ Cologne, Germany

★ Berlin, Germany

Other facts of interest

★ Tower Air was prominently featured in such movies as ''Liar Liar'' and ''Turbulence.'' The latter featured one of their 747 aircraft in the full colors of fictional TransCon Airlines.

★ Many former Tower Air airplanes have been stored in Marana, Arizona.

★ Major artifacts from the World Trade Center are housed for safekeeping in the former Tower Air Hangar 17 at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Aircraft

Tower Air's fleet consisted of 17 Boeing 747 planes in both the 747-100 and 747-200 series, with 14 passenger aircraft and three cargo aircraft.

Incidents and accidents

On December 20, 1995, Tower Air flight 41 from New York Kennedy to Miami veered off the runway during takeoff resulting in 1 flight attendant receiving serious injuries and 24 passengers receiving minor injuries. The aircraft sustained heavy damage and had to be written off.^[6] The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of this accident was the captain's failure to reject the takeoff in a timely manner when excessive nosewheel steering tiller inputs resulted in a loss of directional control on a slippery runway. ^{[7] [8] [9] [10]}

References

1. Air Travel -- Trans-Pacific Carriers Tops In Airline Poll, Seattle Times News Services, May 4, 1997.
2. FAA Proposes Two Fines For Tower Air, Federal Aviation Administration press release, February 3, 1998.
3. http://sec.edgar-online.com/1998/05/01/14/0000940180-98-000483/Section9.asp
4. http://sec.edgar-online.com/1998/05/01/14/0000940180-98-000483/Section9.asp
5. Information for Consumers Regarding the Cessation of Service by Tower Air, Aviation Consumer Protection Division, Department of Transportation.
6. http://www.planespotters.net/Production_List/Boeing/747/20271.html
7. http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/1996/AAR9604.pdf
8. http://dnausers.d-n-a.net/dnetGOJG/201295xx.htm
9. http://aviation-safety.net/investigation/cvr/transcripts/cvr_ff41.php
10. http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19951220-0

External links

★ 1997 interview with co-founder

★ Essay on the Tower Air bankruptcy

★ Travel agency advertising Tower Air service to Athens