Flair Airlines

Is Flair Airlines safe?

Yes, with clear caveats. Flair, Canada's ultra-low-cost airline, has not had a fatal accident or lost an aircraft, and it flies young Boeing 737 MAX 8s. Its weaker points are what investigators found after a 2022 runway overrunRunway excursionWhen an aircraft leaves the runway surface during take-off or landing, either off the end (an overrun) or off the side (a veer-off).More in the glossary: a tired captain, a habit among its pilots of breaking a cockpit procedure, and a broken thrust reverser that maintenance had logged 23 times without fixing. Add a missing 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 audit and years of money trouble, and we score Flair 81, below WestJet at 87 and Porter at 88.

Which Flair record do we count?

Flair Air began in Kelowna in August 2005 as a charter airline, first with Boeing 727s and from 2008 with 737-400s, flying oil sands workers and holiday charters. From 2016 it flew the routes of NewLeaf, a ticket-selling company with no aircraft of its own, and in June 2017 it bought NewLeaf and relaunched as Flair Airlines, a scheduled low-cost carrier.

We score the airline from 2017, because a scheduled low-cost operation with today's fleet is a different business from a small charter airline. The earlier years do not change the picture: the Aviation Safety Network records we use hold no Flair Air accident. Nine years of scheduled flying is a short record, so the accident score is held near the level we give young airlines with a clean history.

The Kitchener overrun

Early on 25 November 2022, flight F8501 from Vancouver landed at Kitchener/Waterloo with 134 passengers and 6 crew. The 737-800's left thrust reverser was locked out under the minimum equipment list. About 70 feet above the runway the captain, meaning to switch off the autothrottle, pressed the take-off/go-around switch instead. After touchdown the autothrottle pushed the left engine forward while the right engine went into reverse, the speed brakes retracted and the autobrake switched off. The jet left the end of the runway at speed and stopped about 500 feet beyond it, on grass. Nobody was hurt.

The TSB's final report, published in February 2025, matters more than the event itself:

• The captain had built up sleep debt and had been awake for almost 18 hours.
• Flair pilots commonly left the autothrottle engaged after switching off the autopilot, against company procedure. The captain had brought the habit from a previous airline.
• The left reverser fault had been reported 23 times in six months. Flair's tracking system did not flag it as recurring, six contracted maintenance organisations worked on it without sharing results, and a parts request waited almost six months.
• In the two years before the overrun, Transport Canada had not looked at Flair's maintenance control system.

Flair changed its 737-800 callouts afterwards so that pilots announce "manual flight" with both autopilot and autothrottle off. This is the main reason its incidents score is 66.

Other events

• Toronto, November 2022. Flight F8-149 had landed from Halifax and was cleared by ground control to cross runway 15L, while the tower had cleared a Caribbean Airlines 737 MAX, BW607, for take-off on the same runway. The tower saw the conflict and stopped the take-off at low speed. The error was on the air traffic control side, so we do not hold it against Flair (TSB data via Aviation Herald).
• Gulf of Mexico, February 2023. Both air-conditioning packs on a 737 MAX failed at 37,000 feet on the way from Cancún to Toronto. The cabin altitude warning sounded, masks dropped, and the crew made an emergency descent and diverted to Fort Lauderdale. The TSB collected information; nobody was reported hurt.
• Kitchener, January 2023. A ground agent's belt loader went into forward gear, drove under a parked 737 MAX and damaged its belly. Under ICAO this is an accident, but it says more about ramp handling than about the airline's flying.
• Toronto, October 2024. Geese hit the captain's windscreen at about 4,000 feet after take-off, and glass entered the cockpit. The captain had minor cuts, the crew returned safely, and the jet flew again a month later.

We found Canadian Transportation Agency fines against Flair for passenger-rights breaches in 2023, 2025 and 2026, but no Transport Canada safety penalty.

Money trouble and the fleet

Flair's finances have been strained for years. In March 2023 the leasing manager Airborne Capital repossessed four of its 737s overnight over missed payments. In early 2024 court documents showed Flair owed the Canada Revenue Agency $67.2 million in import duties on its 737 MAX jets, and the agency obtained an order allowing it to seize property; Flair said it was keeping to a payment plan. The airline paused growth, and since February 2026 it has a new chief executive, Len Corrado, formerly of Sunwing.

The aircraft that fly today are young. About 20 Boeing 737s, nearly all MAX 8s added since 2021, make up the fleet, and the last 1990s-era 737-400 left in 2020. Repossessed or parked jets do not carry passengers, so we leave them out of the fleet score.

Flying Flair: what to check

• Keep your belt loosely fastened all flight. In the 2023 depressurisation and any sudden turbulence, belted passengers are the ones who stay unhurt.
• Have a backup plan for cancellations. Repossessions in 2023 cancelled flights at short notice; that is a travel risk, not a safety one.
• Expect de-icing delays at Edmonton, Winnipeg and Kitchener in winter. A crew that waits for a second spray is doing its job.

How we scored it

The accident record (87) and a young MAX fleet (84) carry the score, and a mostly big-airport network scores 80. Oversight (80) loses points for the missing 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 audit and the surveillance gap the TSB described, and serious incidents (66), led by the Kitchener overrun, are the weakest factor. Overall 81.