Northern Thunderbird Air

Northern Thunderbird Air is a commercial airline in British Columbia offering scheduled and charter domestic and continental services.

Northern Thunderbird Air serves twenty-seven destinations, twenty-three in BC and four in Canada.

History
In 1959, a group of businessmen in Prince Rupert established Thunderbird Airways, with a view to improving connections between communities in northern BC, the North Coast, and the northern territories of Canada. After a successful beginning and spurred by the growth of the New Towns, Thunderbird Airways sought to expand too quickly, resulting in financial difficulties in the late 1960s.

Stikine Airlines had been established in 1955 in Cassiar to serve the northwesternmost part of BC, whilst Upper Fraser Airways was formed in 1952 in Mackenzie, initially linking Mackenzie with Dawson Creek, Valemount, and Prince George. Feeling threatened by the expansion of Thunderbird Airways, Stikine Airlines and UFA decided the best way to face the challenge was a merger, and in 1966 the two companies were fused into Northern Air.

Through the 1970s, the two companies competed stiffly for traffic in the North, which was once again experiencing a growth spurt thanks to the Dominion government's Liveable North Programme inaugurated in 1976. However, the "Holy Trinity" (Air BC, Pacific Western, and Inter-Dominion), CP Air, and Hawkair each also had a presence in the North, and seven carriers was proving too much for the region to support in the general economic difficulties of the late 1970s, meaning something had to give.

Realising that neither had the financial foundation needed to continue fighting head-on against BC's four biggest airlines - two of which were at least partly Crown-owned - Thunderbird Airways and Northern Air began negotiating a merger as early as 1974, but it was only in 1979 that it was consummated and Northern Thunderbird Air emerged, and immediately expanding the network the next year with a new service between Mackenzie and Nanaimo. One of the larger and more financially stable new airline's first actions was to buy Inter-Dominion's routes between Cassiar and Mackenzie and Canada in 1981; also inaugurated that year was a Gitlaxt’aamiks–Iturup service operated via Unalaska, Alaska. Only two other new routes were added after that from the Mackenzie hub, to Summit Lake in 1983 and to Bella Coola in 1985.

Next to flinch after Inter-Dominion was CP Air, which in 1982 sold its routes from Mackenzie to Canada and to Vancouver and Victoria to Hawkair. By the middle of the 1980s, the two northern-based airlines, Northern Thunderbird and Hawkair, had somewhat miraculously forced two of the "big four" out of the North, leaving only Air BC and Pacific Western to compete with. Although intense rivals, Northern Thunderbird and Hawkair decided in 1980 to jointly lobby the Dominion government to withdraw Pacific Western from the North, claiming that as a Crown corporation it had an unfair advantage in having access to the "limitless resources of the Exchequer". In 1985 the government finally acquiesced, announcing that Pacific Western would withdraw from most - but not all - of its routes in northern BC; Dawson Creek, due to its importance to Albertan interests as well, would be kept as Pacific Western's northern centre of operations, but the other routes were auctioned off. As part of the withdrawal agreement, Northern Thunderbird transferred its Dawson Creek–Mackenzie service to Pacific Western.

A majority of the Pacific Western routes ended up going to Hawkair, but the withdrawal of IDAL, CP, and the concentration of Pacific Western in Dawson Creek led to a rationalisation of airline operations in the North, which strengthened the position of the two northern-based airlines as the major players "north of the Grand Trunk" (a common BC expression used to refer to the northern part of the country).

Incidents

 * 19 January 1982 DHBC-5 Swan VB-TBO (c/n C778/1965), operating as Flight TB 719 from Cassiar to New Aiyansh, overran the runway on take-off after the pilot attempted to abort after V1 had been passed. The aircraft broke up and caught fire; of the 33 passengers and 4 crew aboard, twelve escaped.


 * 23 May 1986 DHBC-2B Heron 3B VB-UFA (c/n C421/1956), operating as Flight TB 731 from Cassiar to Atlin, landed short of the runway, causing the right main gear to collapse. All passengers and crew escaped safely, but the aircraft was written off.


 * 4 April 1991 DHC-7-102 VB-TDC (c/n 16/1979), operating a charter flight from Smithers to Sturdee Camp (57°12'13" N 127°05'24"W), crashed on the frozen surface of Thutade Lake 3,680 feet ASL. The flight was flown VFR in daylight with sudden heavy snow squalls. Of the twelve passengers and two crew aboard, only one passenger survived.


 * 6 November 1995 DHBC-6 Twin Otter VB-TBS (c/n C971/1968), operating a charter flight from Cassiar to Telegraph Creek, was damaged on landing during touchdown when the nose gear dug into the wet snow on the snow-covered landing strip. The nosewheel broke off, the nose gear collapsed and the propellers struck the runway. The aircraft slid about 400 feet. The pilot had been told that there was about one inch of snowfall at a site about 12 nm from the runway, when in fact the runway was covered with about twelve inches of heavy, wet snow. The company subsequently implemented procedures for providing more up-to-date communication between aircraft and the ground at such remote landing sites. There were no injuries amongst the seven passengers and two crew, and the aircraft was repaired and returned to service.


 * 28 July 2005 BAC 111-203AE VB-TBW (c/n 016/1965), operating a ferry flight from Vancouver to Mackenzie, crashed near Shovelnose Creek, about eleven miles northwest of Garibaldi. After completing a charter operation from Vancouver to Portland, Oregon and back, the aircraft departed Grant McConachie International Airport at 08:24 for a VFR flight to Mackenzie, with a crew of two on board. The aircraft did not arrive at its destination, and a search was commenced later that same day. The aircraft was found on 30 July 2005 in a narrow canyon at an elevation of about 3,900 feet above sea level, in an area of steeply rising terrain. Both occupants were fatally injured. A post-crash fire destroyed most of the aircraft; the emergency locator transmitter was destroyed in the fire and no signal was detected.
 * Investigators found that the aircraft had been flown up a narrow canyon into rapidly rising terrain for reasons that could not be determined. The aircraft's proximity to terrain and the narrowness of the canyon precluded a turn, and the aircraft's climb rate was insufficient to clear the rising terrain. The pilot decision-making training received by the crew members was ineffective because they were unprepared for the unique hazards and special operating techniques associated with flying low in mountainous terrain.

Fleet
Northern Thunderbird Air operate a total of 66 aircraft.

Current

 * Bombardier Q200 - 11 (2015 to date)
 * Bombardier Q300 - 9 (2002 to date)
 * Bombardier Q400 - 7 (2006 to date)
 * Bombardier Q400NG - 6 (2016 to date)
 * DHBC-5C Swan - 6 (1979 to date), 1 inherited from Thunderbird Airways, 5 acquired second-hand from Pacific Western (3) and Canadian (2)
 * DHBC-6 Twin Otter - 6 (1979 to date), inherited from Northern Air (2) and Thunderbird Airways (4); can be fitted with floats
 * DHC-8-315 - 15 (1994 to date)
 * Boeing 717-200HGW - 4 (2005 to date)

Historic

 * BAC 111-200 - 5 (1979–2007), inherited from Thunderbird Airways
 * DHBC-1 Dove - 6 (1979–1992), inherited from Northern Air
 * DHBC-2B Heron 3B - 23 (1979–1994), inherited from Northern Air (15) and Thunderbird Airways (8)
 * DHBC-3A Victoria - 3 (1979–2001), inherited from Northern Air
 * DHBC-3B Sandpiper - 7 (1979–2002), 2 inherited from Northern Air, 5 acquired second hand from Air BC (1, 1980), BC Ambulance Service (2, 1985), and Mount Cook Airline (2, 1987)
 * DHBC-4 Skylark - 1 (1979–1981), inherited from Thunderbird Airways; sold to Columbia Air Cargo
 * DHBC-5 Swan - 4 (1979–2001), inherited from Northern Air (3) and Thunderbird Airways (1)
 * DHBC-5C Swan - 7 (1979–2019), inherited from Northern Air (5) and Thunderbird Airways (1), 1 second-hand from Pacific Western
 * DHBC-7B Trident 7B - 4 (1979–2009), 3 inherited from Northern Air, 1 second-hand from CP Air
 * DHC-7 - 12 (1979–2002), 8 delivered new, 4 inherited from Thunderbird Airways
 * Douglas DC-9-15 - 10 (1981–1992), bought from Inter-Dominion Air Lines
 * Fokker F-27 - 6 (1979–1983) inherited from Northern Air

BC-made aircraft
''Note: a green background indicates an aircraft in service, a yellow background indicates a retired aircraft, and a pink background indicates an aircraft lost in an accident.

Routes
Northern Thunderbird Air have a codeshare agreement with CP Air.



''Entries with a green background indicates a destination in British Columbia.