How Do You Choose a Private Jet Service Provider?
Part 1: Degrees of Safety
Forbes.com in a recent article says that there are 2400 US aircraft charter operators to choose from - almost double the number from ten years ago and most of them are small operators with one or two aircraft. With all these choices and no one-stop resource like Expedia to use, how do you choose the best service provider?
The assumption is that all operators are all safe; so, it comes down to the matter of price, service, and aircraft type to best fit the mission.
Let’s focus in this conversation on the safety aspect. Having been in this business now for 27 years, I can tell you that the playing field in the area of safety is not totally level. There are different levels of “safe.” While I believe that, by in large, our industry provides a high level of safe transportation, I also know from experience that all charter operators do not operate at the same level of safety.
Safety costs money so cheaper is not always better.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is tasked with keeping our industry safe – from the largest airline to the smallest single engine charter operator. They are arguably the best (and for sure the biggest) aviation oversight and regulatory agency in the world. Other governments from around the world send their aviation counterparts to the FAA here in the US to receive training and to learn how we do it. With the exception of the European Union and its FAA counterpart – EASA – there is no other aviation regulatory agency in the world that can compare to the FAA.
That being said, our FAA is understaffed and overburdened with their own bureaucracy of moving paperwork around (these days I guess it is more like moving electronic files around) and thus does not have the manpower to adequately oversee all of the 2400 charter operators out there across this vast country. Even though their system for developing regulations and providing oversight is good, it is anything but perfect. There is a human element to regulatory oversight and when that is injected into a system that is understaffed and overburdened you arrive at a situation where charter operators are not all held to the same standards. The FAA has made a valiant attempt at making the safety oversight processes as objective as possible, but it still comes down to the day-to-day workload grinds for the inspectors, differences of opinion on how to interpret the rule book (Federal Aviation Regulations) and levels of experience and training between inspectors.
I hope I haven’t scared you off yet. If it makes you feel any better the same situation doesn’t exist just at the level of charter operators. It runs all the way to the level of the biggest airlines in the country. OK, that didn’t make you feel any better so let me say a few things that will.
In today’s world of information availability, you have many sources that are only mouse click away from educating you further about the safety of charter operators.
Let me give you a few to start with:
The NBAA (National Business Aviation Association) has an excellent site and the link below gets you to a page that gives you a list of screening questions to ask when choosing a charter operator: http://www.nbaa.org/admin/options/charter/pre-screening.php
Additionally, there are industry independent audit companies who audit charter operators and have ratings based on how the operator scores on safety records and systems, training, and experience. The best two that I know of are Aviation Research Group US (ARG/US) and Wyvern. Both have been around for a long time and are used by Fortune 500 companies to vet charter services who supplement the company’s own internal flight departments.
There is more to say about safety and picking a good charter service provider. Join us on Monday for further discussion.
Thanks for pointing out the NBAA’s list of questions to ask. I had never seen it before and it is very thorough and accurate. But, is it just me, or does it seem written a bit for pilots and people already familiar with charter services? Although the questions seem good on the surface, I’m not sure people who have never chartered before would know what to do with the answers.
It’s like learning one foreign language question “where is the bathroom?” and hoping someone just gestures for you – but they actually respond back with words & sentences – and the restroom happens to be down the hall, past the double doors, make a left by the elevator and go up 3 steps. Would you know how to find your way there?
Would be great to get the NBAA list “translated” for folks who’ve never chartered before – essentially, the ones that can be helped by this guidance the most. Also, ARG/US and Wyvern don’t cover piston operations, which is often the best choice for short jaunts.
We attempted to do a short-cut list for newbies to charter in our (in-much-need-of-an-update) blog: http://flyfleet.blogspot.com/2009/08/top-5-tips-for-selecting-charter-flight.html. I’m looking forward to reading the next in your safety series.
Thanks for bringing up this topic – it’s certainly a key barrier to attractive the general population to charter.
Cheers,
Ellen
Ellen:
I apprecaiete your comments. Hopefully those of us in the business can start communicating in non-insider terminology. Maybe we should post a glossary of terms and acronyms with definitions.
To grow our industry it is imperative that we communicate better with the market.