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Charter company executives are indicted in '05 crash at Teterboro Airport
by Ted Sherman/The Star-Ledger Wednesday February 04, 2009, 9:48 AM
Federal criminal charges were brought today against the air charter service that four years ago operated an overloaded corporate jet crashed on takeoff at Teterboro Airport.
Six executives who ran Platinum Jet Management LLC of Fort Lauderdale, Fl., were charged in a scheme to run a charter operation that took to the air on fraudulent documents.
John O'Boyle/The Star-LedgerAerial view of an '05 plane crash near the end of the Teterboro Airport runway .
Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph J. Marra, Jr. said the company -- which held itself out as a luxury, high-end charter service -- falsified flight records and routinely overloaded planes with fuel at airports where it was cheaper to top-off the tanks. The company was charged with misrepresenting itself to customers as a certified charter operation.
"The fuel loading was the primary contributing factor in the crash," Marra said. "It is astounding -- and criminal -- that owners and operators of jet aircraft would repeatedly engage in such a dangerous game with passengers and airplanes loaded to the brim with jet fuel. What this indictment alleges is an anything-goes attitude by the defendants to get their planes in the air and maximize profits without regard to passenger safety or compliance with basic regulations."
Noah Addis/The Star-Ledger View of the scene of a commercial jet that crashed into a warehouse in Teterboro.
Both pilots and two commuters on the ground were severely injured when the Challenger CL-600 corporate jet with eight passengers on board attempted to take off on the morning of Feb. 2, 2005 bound for Midway Airport in Chicago. The jet, later found to be nose-heavy, never lifted off the runway despite desperate efforts by the captain and first officer to pull back on the control yoke to get it airborne.
At it shot down Teterboro's 6,015-foot runway, the pilots aborted the takeoff, but were unable to stop. The aircraft plowed through an airport perimeter fence and across six lanes of traffic on Route 46 during rush hour -- shearing the roof off a car and slamming into a clothing warehouse.
No one was killed in the accident, but Platinum was grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration for a month after the accident and the National Transportation Safety Board two years ago issued a highly critical report assigning wide blame in the high profile incident, citing "a host of irregularities."
Platinum did not have an operations certificate needed to provide air charter services and could not carry passengers. The FAA later found that it was using an air carrier certificate through a "piggybacking" agreement with another firm -- Darby Aviation, also known as AlphaJet. of Muscle Shoals, Ala. Darby was identified by its initials in the indictment, but not charged. The NTSB also faulted the FAA for it failure to provide proper oversight.
The indictment, which was returned on Jan. 23 and unsealed with arrests this morning, charges Michael Brassington, 35, the President, CEO, chief pilot and co-founder of Platinum Jet; his brother, Paul Brassington, 29, a Vice President and co-founder of Platinum Jet; Andre Budhan, 42, a managing member and co-founder of Platinum Jet; Joseph Singh, 37, the director of charters for the company; Brien McKenzie, 42, Platinum Jet's director of maintenance; and Francis Vieira, 59, a Platinum Jet pilot.
Michael and Paul Brassington, Budhan and McKenzie were arrested this morning in Ft. Lauderdale by Special Agents of the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General and the FBI. They are expected to appear before a federal Magistrate Judge today in Ft. Lauderdale. Arrest warrants have been issued for Vieira and Singh and they are being sought.
NTSB investigators concluded the pilots in the Teteroboro crash -- who themselves were not charged -- failed to properly calculate the plane's center of gravity, making it impossible to lift the nose off the runway at the speed it was traveling. The captain had been fired from a previous job for safety related issues and poor airmanship, and lied about his experience on job applications. He had not completed the training needed to fly under the federal rules governing air charter passenger flights, investigators said.
The first officer had an invalid medical certificate and investigators said he lacked the training for the accident flight. And the cabin aide -- a Miami model and waitress -- did not know how to open the door of the plane and never checked to ensure all passengers were belted into their seats.
According to the indictment, Platinum instructed its pilots to falsify weight-and-balance graphs, and flew more than 25 commercial charter flights with weights that exceeded aircraft center of gravity limits.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/charter_company_executives_are.html
by Ted Sherman/The Star-Ledger Wednesday February 04, 2009, 9:48 AM
Federal criminal charges were brought today against the air charter service that four years ago operated an overloaded corporate jet crashed on takeoff at Teterboro Airport.
Six executives who ran Platinum Jet Management LLC of Fort Lauderdale, Fl., were charged in a scheme to run a charter operation that took to the air on fraudulent documents.
John O'Boyle/The Star-LedgerAerial view of an '05 plane crash near the end of the Teterboro Airport runway .
Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph J. Marra, Jr. said the company -- which held itself out as a luxury, high-end charter service -- falsified flight records and routinely overloaded planes with fuel at airports where it was cheaper to top-off the tanks. The company was charged with misrepresenting itself to customers as a certified charter operation.
"The fuel loading was the primary contributing factor in the crash," Marra said. "It is astounding -- and criminal -- that owners and operators of jet aircraft would repeatedly engage in such a dangerous game with passengers and airplanes loaded to the brim with jet fuel. What this indictment alleges is an anything-goes attitude by the defendants to get their planes in the air and maximize profits without regard to passenger safety or compliance with basic regulations."
Noah Addis/The Star-Ledger View of the scene of a commercial jet that crashed into a warehouse in Teterboro.
Both pilots and two commuters on the ground were severely injured when the Challenger CL-600 corporate jet with eight passengers on board attempted to take off on the morning of Feb. 2, 2005 bound for Midway Airport in Chicago. The jet, later found to be nose-heavy, never lifted off the runway despite desperate efforts by the captain and first officer to pull back on the control yoke to get it airborne.
At it shot down Teterboro's 6,015-foot runway, the pilots aborted the takeoff, but were unable to stop. The aircraft plowed through an airport perimeter fence and across six lanes of traffic on Route 46 during rush hour -- shearing the roof off a car and slamming into a clothing warehouse.
No one was killed in the accident, but Platinum was grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration for a month after the accident and the National Transportation Safety Board two years ago issued a highly critical report assigning wide blame in the high profile incident, citing "a host of irregularities."
Platinum did not have an operations certificate needed to provide air charter services and could not carry passengers. The FAA later found that it was using an air carrier certificate through a "piggybacking" agreement with another firm -- Darby Aviation, also known as AlphaJet. of Muscle Shoals, Ala. Darby was identified by its initials in the indictment, but not charged. The NTSB also faulted the FAA for it failure to provide proper oversight.
The indictment, which was returned on Jan. 23 and unsealed with arrests this morning, charges Michael Brassington, 35, the President, CEO, chief pilot and co-founder of Platinum Jet; his brother, Paul Brassington, 29, a Vice President and co-founder of Platinum Jet; Andre Budhan, 42, a managing member and co-founder of Platinum Jet; Joseph Singh, 37, the director of charters for the company; Brien McKenzie, 42, Platinum Jet's director of maintenance; and Francis Vieira, 59, a Platinum Jet pilot.
Michael and Paul Brassington, Budhan and McKenzie were arrested this morning in Ft. Lauderdale by Special Agents of the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General and the FBI. They are expected to appear before a federal Magistrate Judge today in Ft. Lauderdale. Arrest warrants have been issued for Vieira and Singh and they are being sought.
NTSB investigators concluded the pilots in the Teteroboro crash -- who themselves were not charged -- failed to properly calculate the plane's center of gravity, making it impossible to lift the nose off the runway at the speed it was traveling. The captain had been fired from a previous job for safety related issues and poor airmanship, and lied about his experience on job applications. He had not completed the training needed to fly under the federal rules governing air charter passenger flights, investigators said.
The first officer had an invalid medical certificate and investigators said he lacked the training for the accident flight. And the cabin aide -- a Miami model and waitress -- did not know how to open the door of the plane and never checked to ensure all passengers were belted into their seats.
According to the indictment, Platinum instructed its pilots to falsify weight-and-balance graphs, and flew more than 25 commercial charter flights with weights that exceeded aircraft center of gravity limits.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/charter_company_executives_are.html
