Nolisair

Accidents and incidents

Nationair Canada operated a number of sub-contracts all over the world, including Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 for Nigeria Airways which crashed at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on 11 July 1991, killing all 247 passengers and 14 crew members on board. It was and remains the deadliest aviation accident involving a Canadian airline and a McDonnell Douglas DC-8.

The cause of the crash was found to be under-inflated tires, which in turn caused overheated tyres to catch fire, and failure of hydraulic systems and eventual in-flight break-up of the aircraft short of making an emergency landing.

The safety of the airline was often called into question but the president, Robert Obadia, vehemently denied the accusations. Eventually, it would be discovered that the airline often flew aircraft that were unairworthy, and that Transport Canada knew this, but did nothing about it, "losing" a safety review that cast the airline in a negative light. It was later found that the aircraft that crashed in Saudi Arabia had been unairworthy for several days prior to the crash, and that staff had altered documentation in order for the flight to depart on time. In an interview for an episode of Mayday covering the accident, Nolisair executive William Fowler opined that the project managers Nolisair assigned to charter operations, including Flight 2120 victim Aldo Tetamenti, had unintentionally degraded safety culture by placing excessive pressure on maintenance crews.

By the time it was publicly disclosed that the cause of the crash was negligence on the part of the company, it had already been bankrupt and dissolved for several years.

Incidents and accidents

In July 1991, a wet-leased Nationair Canada Douglas DC-8 operating as Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 caught fire shortly after takeoff and crashed just seconds short of an emergency landing, killing all 261 on board. During the investigation, investigators discovered that the project manager for that flight had pressured the Technair crew into releasing the aircraft with underinflated tyres. Two tyres on the left bogie lost structural integrity due to heat build-up and ended up failing during the takeoff roll, leading to the tyre remnants bursting into flames and compromising the aircraft when the landing gear was retracted. The accident exposed several operating problems with the airline and was a major contributing factor to the company's collapse in 1993.