Dan Air

Is Dan Air safe?

Mostly, yes. Dan Air has flown since 2018 without an accident, it works under European rules, and it joined IATA, which requires the IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary safety audit. What holds the score back is a small fleet of Airbus jets around 20 years old, a serious incident near Bacău in December 2025 in which a crew drifted off the approach path and got a terrain warning, and money trouble: on 22 October 2026 the company asked a court for protection from creditors. We score it 78, one point below Fly One Airlines Romania and two below TAROM.

Who is Dan Air?

The pilot Dan Iuhas founded the company in 2017 as Just Us Air. For its first five years it rented its aircraft with crews to other airlines, a business called wet lease or ACMI. Its customers have included Jazeera Airways, Transavia, TUI, Air Moldova, airBaltic, Air Serbia, Wizz Air and TAROM. From December 2023 it flew Baghdad and Erbil to Berlin, Düsseldorf and Copenhagen for Fly Baghdad, which the EU bans from its airspace; on those flights the Romanian crew and certificate made the difference.

It took the name Dan Air in 2021 and started selling its own tickets in June 2023, first from Bucharest and Brașov and later from Bacău in the north-east. In June 2025 it became the first European airline to fly to Syria again, with a Bucharest to Damascus route. Aleppo followed, then Amman, Yerevan and Tbilisi from July 2026. It is not related to Dan-Air London, the British airline that stopped flying in 1992.

The Bacău approach in December 2025

The event that matters most happened on a night flight from London Luton on 2 December 2025. As the A319 descended towards Bacău in low cloud, the crew got repeated warnings that both GPS receivers had failed. Although a precision approach was available, the aircraft ended up about 4 nautical miles to the right of the localizer, and as the crew tried to rejoin it the ground-proximity system called "terrain". They climbed to flight level 110, asked air traffic control for radar vectors and landed about 25 minutes later.

Romania's investigation board (SIAA) classes it as a serious incident and the French BEA lists it. No cause has been published. GPS interference is common in the Black Sea region, and EASA has warned airlines about it since 2022, but it is only one of the possible factors investigators will look at. A month later the same aircraft diverted to Frankfurt when sensors suggested smoke in the cabin ventilation; it landed normally.

Old jets and a maintenance dispute

Dan Air flies the Airbus A320 family, a fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary design with a good record, but its jets are old. The A319 YR-URS was built in 2008 and the A320 YR-DSE in 2005. The aircraft belong to the lessor Aviator Capital.

The fleet is so small that one aircraft out of service hurts. In July 2026 an aircraft still in heavy maintenance forced Dan Air to cancel flights from 15 to 19 July; it said it would not fly any aircraft until all checks were done. A later company report described a dispute over YR-DSE: Dan Air says the maintenance firm at Craiova did not store the jet properly while it was parked, leaving areas unprotected and systems wrongly preserved, and stopped work on it in May 2026. The aircraft did not fly in that state, but it shows how thin the margins are.

The insolvency filing

On 22 October 2026 Dan Air asked the Ilfov court to open insolvency proceedings with the aim of reorganising. The company says it has no bank debt, owes nothing to its fuel suppliers or to Bucharest airport, and that every scheduled flight will operate. Its chief executive, Matt Ian David, told Romania Insider that the trigger was about €10 million owed to Romania's Environmental Fund for carbon allowances the airline had not bought since 2024. Faced with paying for emissions or for fuel, he said, "we chose fuel". The court had not ruled when we checked.

Financial stress does not ground an airline, and the certificate, crews and maintenance rules stay the same. We do not score finances. We will watch whether the stress shows up in maintenance or in the regulator's attention.

Before you fly Dan Air

• Pay by card and keep the booking reference. If the restructuring fails, a card chargeback is often the fastest way to get money back for a cancelled flight.
• Check flight status the day before. With two or three aircraft, a single technical problem can cancel a whole day's flying, as in July 2026.
• Read your government's advice for Syria. EASA still has a conflict-zone bulletin for Syrian airspace; the flights have run since 2025, but the risk on the ground in Damascus and Aleppo is the bigger question.

How we scored it

A clean eight-year accident record (86) and EU oversight with IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary (90) carry the score. Jets around 20 years old and a fleet stretched by maintenance trouble put the fleet at 58. Incidents score 68 for the Bacău terrain warning, and flights into Syria and from a small regional airport put the environment at 62. Overall 78.