Tower Air was a certificated FAR 121 U.S. charter airline that also operated scheduled passenger service from 1983 until 2000 when the company declared bankruptcy and was liquidated.

[1][2] Tower Air was co-founded, majority-owned, and managed by Morris K. Nachtomi, an Israeli citizen who had emigrated to the United States.

[3] After a 30-year career with El Al, he moved to New York to start a passenger operation for Flying Tiger Line, Metro International Airways.

[7] In 1993, Tower Air renovated and expanded Building 213, a former Pan Am hangar, to serve as its dedicated JFK terminal, adding three finger gates in 1995.

[8] During the 1990-91 Gulf War, Tower Air evacuated US citizens from Tel Aviv using the otherwise empty return legs of military charter flights to the region.

[10] In January 1998 the FAA successfully sought to have the airline remove Guy Nachtomi, son of the Chairman and CEO, 24 years old at that time, from the position of Vice President-Operations.

According to the Official Airline Guide (OAG), in early 1989 Tower Air was operating transatlantic flights from both New York John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Miami (MIA) with nonstops between New York and Brussels, Copenhagen and Oslo with direct one stop service to and from Tel Aviv, and nonstops between Miami and Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of this accident was the captain's failure to reject the takeoff in a timely manner when excessive nosewheel steering tiller inputs resulted in a loss of directional control on a slippery runway.