The safety rules for operators of private charter flights are very different from commercial airlines: Pilots don’t need as much experience, black boxes aren’t always required, and there isn’t a mandated retirement age.
Aviation industry officials said the attention to safety varies widely among private charter operators. The Air Charter Safety Foundation, an industry group, said it helps operators go above and beyond minimum safety requirements. The Federal Aviation Administration said it has sought to help smaller charter operators standardize pilot training.
Aurora Aviation, which was doing business as Upper Jets and operated the aircraft involved in Sunday’s accident, didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday. “You can pay a junior first officer a fraction of what you will pay an experienced pilot. Government and industry officials tout safety management systems as a way to monitor and stamp out risks before they lead to bigger problems. These systems, required of major airlines and manufacturers such as Boeing, have non-punitive ways for staff to report issues.
Still, private charter operators in the U.S. have consistently had a higher accident rate than airlines since at least 2015, according to data from the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB said maintenance records indicate the Learjet 60 that crashed Sunday at some point had a cockpit voice recorder, one of the black boxes that could help investigators piece together what led to the tragedy.
Previously, the charter operator said it was cooperating with the NTSB’s crash investigation. “With the airlines, you have joint decision-making between the dispatcher and the crew,” said Greg Feith, a former senior NTSB investigator. With many private charter operators, it is the pilots alone evaluating factors such as weather and making the call on whether to fly or not, he said. The rules can result in variability of pilot quality at charter operators, said Bruce Landsberg, a pilot who is a former NTSB vice chairman. Financial pressures at some charter operators can also influence hiring decisions, he said. “Some of these operators are working on a very thin margin,” he said. The safety board said it wasn’t clear if the recorder was still on the plane.
