Tower Air was a certificated FAR 121 schedule
and charter U.S. airline that operated from 1983
until 2000, when the company declared bankruptcy
and was liquidated. Scheduled flights were
initially offered over a New York - Brussels -
Tel Aviv route in addition to charter flights to
Athens, Frankfurt, Rome, and Zurich.
Short-lived New York - Los Angeles flights were
introduced with the addition of an ex-Avianca
747-100 in 1984. The airline was headquartered
in Building 178 and later in Hangar 17 at John
F. Kennedy International Airport in Jamaica,
Queens, New York City.
Tower Air was co-founded, majority owned, and
managed by Morris K. Nachtomi, an Israeli
citizen who had emigrated to the United States.
After a 30-year career with El Al, Nachtomi
joined a wholesaler and tour package operator
Tower Travel Corporation in 1981.
Tower Travel Corporation was founded by Zev
Melamid and his wife Estelle in the 1970s to
promote discount travel to Israel. Tower Travel
Corporation is credited with developing the
wholesale charter market between New York and
Tel Aviv. Tower Air was formed on August 13,
1982 by Zev Melamid, Mordechi Gill, Morris
Nachtomi, and Sam Fondlier as equal
shareholders. The airline was formed to replace
the lift Tower Travel Corporation lost when
Flying Tiger Line decided to end commercial
passenger charters (military airlift cargo
flights continued) and the three passenger 747s
were traded to Pan Am for freighter 747s.
Arthur Fondlier, son of Sam Fondlier and the
former Chief Financial Officer of Tower Air, was
a passenger in first class section of 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 armed forces personnel to overseas
locations, and from the United Nations to
transport troops to their peacekeeping missions
all over the world. 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 (a former Pan Am Admin facility).
There was a large focus on flights to Ben Gurion
International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel,
becoming a major competitor to El Al and British
Airways in the US-Israel market.
The airline also had several flights to 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. Tower Air also provided
substitute aircraft for more established
carriers on occasion, for example on the JFK to
LHR route when weather delayed an inbound Virgin
Atlantic Airways service in December 1994.
The 1997 Zagat Survey ranked Tower Air 59th out
of 61 ranked carriers in terms of maintenance,
ahead of only Valujet and Aeroflot. In February
1998, the Federal Aviation Administration
proposed two civil penalties totaling $276,000
for continuing to fly aircraft that required
maintenance. In January, 1988 the FAA
successfully sought to have the airline remove
Guy Nachtomi, son of the Chairman and CEO, from
the position of Vice President-Operations. This
was done in part because of the airline's
maintenance problems, as well as his lack of
airline experience (he worked at Twentieth
Century Fox until 1994).
The junior Mr. Nachtomi continued service
with the company in a capacity unrelated to
maintenance as Vice President-Office of the
Chairman. 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 its operations. At the same time
the airline lost an arbitration brought by
the Association of Flight Attendants,
claiming that Tower Air was lodging their
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 their FAA air operator's
certificate on November 28, 2000.
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