Hawkair

Hawkair is a commercial airline in British Columbia offering scheduled domestic and continental passenger services as well as scheduled and charter cargo flights. It is the largest of the carriers focussed on serving the North.

Hawkair serve 38 destinations (28 domestic, 10 continental) in three countries.

History
Hawkair was established in 1960 in Terrace, with the hopes of exploiting the recently-launched government initiative to develop northern British Columbia known as the New Towns programme, soon becoming a significant player in the North, and by the 1970s finding itself in intense competition with Air BC, Pacific Western, Inter-Dominion, CP Air, Thunderbird Airways, and Northern Air for the northern market; the latter two merged in 1979 to form Northern Thunderbird Air.

In response to Northern Thunderbird's acquisition of Inter-Dominion's (relatively small) northern operations in 1981, Hawkair acquired CP Air's Mackenzie operations in 1982. Although fierce 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.

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).

Hawkair entered a codeshare agreement with Canadian North in 2007.

Incidents

 * 21 June 1988 DHBC-5(C) Swan VB-HWO (c/n C779/1965), operating a charter cargo flight from Wrangell, Alaska to Bronson Creek, groundlooped on landing and ran off the runway, causing the undercarriage to collapse. There were no casualties amongst the three crew aboard, but the aircraft was written off.


 * 21 May 1989 DHBC-2B Heron 3B VB-HWC (c/n C620/1961), operating a charter flight for mine engineers from Wrangell, Alaska to Bronson Creek, suffered a fire in no. 2 engine whilst on final approach to Bronson Creek. The aircraft landed successfully and both pilots and the seven passengers evacuated safely, but the fire spread to the fuel tank after landing and the aircraft burnt out.


 * 31 January 2020 Boeing 737-217(QC) VB-HJA (c/n 22658/1982), operating as Flight BH 107 from Vancouver to Ganiks Laxha, suffered a nosegear collapse on landing in snow. With snow falling and covering much of the runway, the flight crew had limited visual cues available during the landing, reducing their ability to correctly judge the aircraft's lateral position once it had passed the threshold. Snow clearing operations cleared only the centre 100 feet of the runway, creating windrows approximately eighteen inches high on either side of the cleared area; these reduced the pilot's lateral manoeuvring room during the landing. Due to variable wind conditions, the aircraft touched down ten feet to the left of the centreline, and whilst still in a light weight-on-wheels condition, a gust caused further deviation to the left until the left main gear came into contact with the windrow. As the main gear hit the windrow, the drag on that gear caused the aircraft to swerve left, causing the nosegear and right main gear to also come into contact with the windrow, during which snow and ice became packed in the nosegear bay, causing structural deformation. As a result, the nosegear was no longer being held in place and collapsed into the fuselage, causing substantial damage to the aircraft. There were no fatalities amongst the five crew and 97 passengers aboard; the aircraft was repaired and returned to service on 10 June 2020.

Fleet
Hawkair operate a total of 63 aircraft.

Current

 * Airbus A220-200 0 +12 on order, to be delivered 2025–2028
 * Antonov An-74T-200 - 4 (1995 to date)
 * Boeing 717-200HGW - 3 (2005 to date); to be retired by 2028
 * Boeing 737-200QC - 2 (2000 to date); to be retired by 2026
 * Boeing 737-300 - 5 (2004 to date); to be retired by 2028
 * DHBC-5 Swan - 2 (1968 to date); to be retired by 2026
 * Dornier Do-228NG - 18 (2016 to date)
 * Dornier Do-328eco - 0, +20 on order, to be delivered 2026–2028
 * Fokker 50 - 12 (1997 to date); to be retired by 2027
 * Lockheed L-100-20 Hercules - 2 (1973 to date); to be retired by 2025
 * Lockheed-Martin LM-100J Hercules - 0, +2 on order; to be delivered by 2025
 * Mitsubishi SpaceJet M100 0, +16 on order, to be delivered 2024–2027
 * Saab 340 - 15 (1993 to date); to be retired by 2028

Historic

 * Antonov An-74TK-100 - 2 (1993–1995)
 * Blackburn B-101 Beverley - 3 (1967–1977)
 * Boeing 737-200QC - 1 (2000–2019)
 * DHBC-2 Heron 3B - 6 (1961–1989)
 * DHBC-4 Skylark - 5 (1961–1983)
 * DHBC-5 Swan - 3 (1965–2016)
 * DHBC-5C Swan - 3 (1990–2017), Combi
 * DHBC-6 Twin Otter - 4 (1977–1994)
 * DHBC-7B Trident 7B - 3 (1994–2009)
 * Dornier Do-228 - 12 (1988–2018)
 * NAMC YS-11 - 7 (1985–1999)
 * Saab 340 - 2 (1993 to 2020)

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
There are codeshare agreements with Canadian North and Inter-Dominion Air Lines.



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