A junket is defined as a trip made by an official and funded by the public or a promotional trip made at the expense of a third party. The most common types are casino, press film and/or political junkets. Chartered flights are a similar category of aviation, designed to fit the needs of specific groups and/or destination flying, but at the passenger or company’s expense. The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) summarizes the increasing demand for charter and/or junket flights in three words: safety, security and productivity. If you are looking to charter an aircraft, education on the basics of charter flights and the company are important before you book the flight. As a consumer, you should pay attention to more than price, including whether the company has a current registration with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the safety record of both the company and the pilots, and the age and maintenance records of the company’s fleet.
Even though junkets and charters offer many advantages to the flying public, there are several factors that increase the possibility for incidents and/or accidents. In many cases the pilots, planes, booking company and mechanics may be employed and/or owned by different companies; however, in the case of commercial airlines, these functions are normally contained or done in-house within that carrier or a common parent company. Although commercial aviation is subject to many of the same weaknesses and/or risks as charters and junkets, the small scale exposes charters and junkets to different types of risks. Charter aircraft are largely regulated under the Commuter and on-demand operations rules dictated in Part 135 of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR). These regulations grow more stringent with both the increase in demand as well as the rise in number of accidents such as the crash of Payne Stewart’s chartered flight in October 1999, the Challenger aircraft accident at the Teterboro Airport in February 2005, and most recently the July 2008 East Coast Jets crash in Minnesota.
Some of the main questions in charter aircraft accident investigation may include: Who is in charge of oversight? Which party is responsible for the charter operation as a whole? Are there contracts between the parties that allocate risk and liability?
The increasing number of parties involved will likely lead to a finger-pointing game during the incident or accident investigation. The difficulty in identifying the proper parties, should an incident or accident occur, can be handled deftly by experienced aviation counsel. The Motley Rice aviation team is well versed in the complexities involved not only in major commercial aircraft incidents, but also those of smaller charter or junket operations.
