First Air

When Canadian spotters talk about “real” Arctic aviation, one name comes up almost every time: First Air. For decades the airline brought people, mail, groceries and building materials to communities with no road connection to the south – and often did so with a Boeing 737-200 that landed on gravel runways. First Air has not existed since 2019, but its history lives on in Canadian North. This page shows you what made the airline special, which aircraft it flew and how to recognize it in old photos.

First Air at a glance

First Air was a historic Canadian regional airline headquartered in Kanata near Ottawa. Its aircraft connected the Arctic regions of Nunavut, Nunavik and the Northwest Territories with one another and with the cities in the south. The most important hubs in the north were Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Rankin Inlet. Hangar, cargo handling and maintenance were based at Ottawa Airport.

Legally the company was called Bradley Air Services Limited until the end; First Air was the brand name. The roots go back to 1946, when the aviation pioneer Russell “Russ” Bradley founded a flying school in Ottawa. In 1950 it moved to Carp, west of the city, and called itself Bradley Air Services. Over the following decades the company made a name for itself with charter and supply flights in the Arctic, before it began scheduled service between Ottawa and North Bay in 1973 – at first with an aircraft for eight passengers.

The airline’s character was shaped by a change of ownership in 1990: the Makivik Corporation, the organization of the Inuit of Nunavik in northern Québec, bought the company. That meant First Air belonged to the people who made up a large part of its customer base. Unlike Air Canada, First Air was never a member of an alliance, but it cooperated through codeshares with Air Greenland, Air North and Calm Air, among others.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code 7F: appeared in flight numbers, on tickets and in schedules.
• ICAO code FAB: used by air traffic control; it also showed up on flight trackers.
• Callsign FIRST AIR: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

After the merger 7F disappeared, and the combined airline took over Canadian North’s code 5T. The callsign “FIRST AIR” stayed in use for a while and was replaced in early 2021. Since then Canadian North has flown as AKT with the callsign “ARCTIC”. For you that means: if you still see FAB in old ADS-B logs from 2020, it may already have been a flight in the combined network. How to read tracker histories properly is explained in the guide to flight tracking for spotters.

Growth in the north: acquisitions and network

Today’s structure of northern air service is the result of many mergers, and First Air played a big part in them. Bradley Air Services expanded its business in the eastern Arctic early on, and in the 1990s two airlines from Yellowknife followed: Ptarmigan Airways in 1995, NWT Air in 1997. Both were absorbed into First Air and brought the network into the western part of the Arctic.

In the end First Air served more than 30 destinations in Nunavut, Nunavik and the Northwest Territories. There were also connections to the south, including Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton and Winnipeg. In the north, places such as Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Cambridge Bay, Resolute, Inuvik, Hay River and Whitehorse were on the schedule. Many of them had no road to the south – the aircraft was bus, truck and mail van in one.

The fleet: 737-200, ATR and lots of history

Over the decades First Air flew a colorful mix that suited conditions in the north. The fleet was rather small and old at the end: shortly before the end it comprised around 18 aircraft with an average age of about 27 years.

Type	Role at First Air	Spotter note
Boeing 737-200 Combi	Jet backbone in the north, passengers and cargo	Many with a gravel kit for gravel runways
ATR 42	Turboprop for shorter routes, replacing the HS 748 from 2001	High-wing with T-tail
ATR 72	Larger turboprop, also as a Combi	Longer fuselage than the ATR 42
Hawker Siddeley HS 748	Older Combi turboprop, last aircraft retired in 2011	Low-wing with two Dart turboprops
Boeing 727-100/-200	Older jets, last 727 retired in 2010	Trijet with T-tail, historic
Lockheed L-100 Hercules	Freighter for bulky loads	Civilian Hercules, historic
Boeing 767-200 freighter	Leased for a time, from 2009	Rare widebody jet at First Air
DHC-6 Twin Otter, DC-3	Smaller aircraft for short runways	Historic, rugged in bush flying

The Boeing 737-200 is the aircraft most strongly associated with First Air. For shorter routes the airline used turboprops: from late 2001 the ATR 42 gradually replaced the Hawker Siddeley HS 748, and Combi versions of the ATR 72-200 were added. For many years the Canadian-built DHC-6 Twin Otter was also part of the fleet. For heavy cargo the Lockheed L-100 Hercules was in service, the civilian variant of the well-known military transport. Among the jets, Boeing 727-200s and the 727-100 were part of the fleet before the 737 era, and from 2009 a leased freighter of the type Boeing 767-200 joined for a few years.

For a time a leased Avro RJ was also part of the fleet. One-offs like this are especially appealing to collectors because they appear in hardly any fleet overview.

The gravel kit: a jet for gravel runways

For a long time many runways in the Canadian Arctic were not paved but made of gravel. For most jet aircraft that is a deal breaker: stones thrown up by the landing gear or sucked in by the engines can cause serious damage. For the 737-200, Boeing therefore offered an Unpaved Strip Kit, simply called the gravel kit in spotter jargon.

Boeing developed the kit because the 737-200, thanks to its good short-field performance, could reach airfields where other jets cannot operate safely. This very combination of jet speed and gravel-runway capability explains why the old 737-200s flew in northern Canada for so long. How to tell the 737 generations apart is shown in the guide Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart.

Gravel kits were not found only at First Air. Canadian North, Air Inuit and Nolinor Aviation also flew 737-200s with such modifications, and in Alaska, Alaska Airlines used the kit until it retired its 737-200s in 2007.

How to recognize First Air

First Air’s livery was in red and white. The most important trademark was the inukshuk logo: a stylized stone figure like those the Inuit build as waymarkers in the treeless landscape. At the merger the owners announced that they would adopt exactly this logo and the red-and-white color scheme for the combined Canadian North brand. If you sort old photos, you should therefore look closely at which titles are on the fuselage.

The types themselves help too. You recognize a 737-200 Combi by the large cargo door at the front left, and a gravel-kit aircraft by the add-ons described above. Then there is the Canadian registration with C- on the tail. How registrations are structured and why they are the best basis for a reliable identification is explained in the guide Understanding aircraft registrations.

Flight 6560: the worst accident

On August 20, 2011, First Air Flight 6560 crashed, a charter flight from Yellowknife to Resolute in Nunavut. The Boeing 737-210C with the registration C-GNWN, built in 1975 and equipped with a gravel kit, hit a hill about one nautical mile east of the runway on approach. Twelve of the 15 people on board died, and three passengers survived with serious injuries. They were rescued by Canadian soldiers who were on site because of the military exercise Operation Nanook.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) classified the accident as controlled flight into terrain, that is, flight into the ground without a technical defect as the main cause. It cited several factors: a late-started descent, an autopilot that was partly disengaged on final approach, course deviations near the magnetic north pole and communication in the cockpit in which the first officer’s warnings did not get through. The agency published its final report in March 2014. It is still considered an important lesson on unstable approaches.

The merger with Canadian North

For years First Air and Canadian North flew side by side in the north, partly on the same routes. A first attempt at a merger began in April 2014 but was called off in October 2014; the codeshare cooperation continued until 2017.

The second attempt worked: in September 2018 Makivik and the Inuvialuit owners of Canadian North signed a binding agreement. In June 2019 the Canadian government gave the green light with conditions, and in July 2019 the owners closed the transaction. On November 1, 2019, both airlines flew with a joint schedule for the first time. The name First Air disappeared, the name Canadian North remained – but with the inukshuk and the red colors of First Air. From December 2021 the airline appeared in a new Canadian North livery. In 2025 the Inuit owners sold Canadian North to Exchange Income Corporation.

Interesting for data fans: Canadian North’s aircraft are still registered to Bradley Air Services – that is, to the company that once appeared as First Air. The airline’s headquarters are now also in Ottawa. The 737-200 lasted at Canadian North until 2023: the last scheduled passenger service with the type took place in May 2023.

First Air today: traces for spotters

An active First Air sighting is no longer possible today. Still, there are ways to get the airline into your logbook:

• Go through the archive: old photos from Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton or Yellowknife can be assigned cleanly by registration and date. The guide Recognizing vintage aircraft helps.
• Spot the successor: with Canadian North you are effectively spotting the former First Air network today. Air Inuit, also owned by Makivik, likewise shapes air service in northern Québec.
• Visit museums: in the Ottawa area, the old home of Bradley Air Services, you find the Canada Aviation and Space Museum with plenty of Canadian aviation history.
• Judge rarity: you can estimate how valuable an old sighting is with the guide How rare is my sighting?

If you are interested in the other types of Arctic aviation, the topic Telling the ATR 42/72 and Dash 8 apart has the right features. And if you want to follow the history of western Canada further, take a look at Pacific Western Airlines – a predecessor of Canadian North that also flew Hercules freighters.

Common mix-ups

• Equating First Air with Canadian North – until the end of October 2019 they were two separate airlines with their own codes.
• Automatically assigning the red-and-white inukshuk logo to First Air – after the merger Canadian North used this brand too.
• Taking every 737-200 in the north for First Air – Canadian North, Air Inuit, Nolinor and Air North also flew the type.
• Taking the gravel kit for standard – not every 737-200 had the add-ons; you can check it well in photos.
• Mixing up the ATR 42 and ATR 72 – the 72 is clearly longer and has more windows.
• Taking Bradley Air Services for a different airline – it was the legal company behind First Air.

Conclusion

First Air was more than a regional airline: for decades it was a lifeline for communities without road access, and from 1990 it belonged to the Inuit themselves. For spotters it stands above all for the 737-200 Combi with a gravel kit, a jet that landed on gravel runways where others would have long given up. Since 2019 the airline lives on in Canadian North – and every old shot with “First Air” titles is a small piece of Canadian aviation history today.