Flight Express Safety History

[PA44Jockey]

I am curious to know what the views are of the safety records for companies such as airnet and Flight Express.

When searching the NTSB database I noticed within the past 10 years there were a few fatal accidents and a number of safety issues. I am not placing blame and saying the aircraft were the cause of each accident, but more so I am curious to know if their record compares to it's competitors.

I believe the accident last back in June in TPA was an engine failure in night VFR conditions. I think the pilot was only there a few weeks and I haven't heard if he or she is still there.

What is the average, or normal (if it can be normal) amount of engine failures that occur at carriers such as these?

Thoughts?

 

[brokeflyer]

safety is their number one priority......as long as it dont cut into profit.

 

[PA44Jockey]

safety is their number one priority......as long as it dont cut into profit.

So profit is their number one priority.

 

[brokeflyer]

So profit is their number one priority.

What do you think?

 

[hunt234]

I worked at AirNet for two years (07-09) and felt that safety was very important to them. If you wrote up an aircraft, that was it, no questions asked. The maintenance was excellent in my opinion as well, and they had a very large budget for it. If I recall correctly, they have had only four fatal crashes in nearly 40 years of operations. Compare that to other 135 freight companies.

I wrote up a deice boot in Canada three days before Christmas. Because of a lack of available parts and mechanics due to the holiday, the plane stayed up there for two weeks. The run was chartered out by another company (I was flying in the Northwest, and they had no other Caravans nearby) and I never got a call from anybody complaining about it, or asking me if I could make it back to Seattle.

Someone might disagree with me, but that was my experience there. As for Flight Express, I don't know anything about their safety record.

 

[NCherches]

Freight Runners Express is an aweful outfit and forced pilots to break FAR's on a daily basis to get the job done. Glad im not there anymore!

 

[Basil]

I'll second Hunt234 about AirNet. Never questioned about mx issues. I only knew of three fatalities, two of which were pilot-error.

Training was four weeks, one of which was actual flying the BE-58 and the checkride. I'd talk to other check-haulers in similar aircraft who would be trained and checked over a single weekend!

 

[DAS at 10/250]

I know for a first had fact that Airnet's MX was less then ideal. I used to fly for Pinnacle Air Group out of ASG and was there when we bought the assets to Airnet's JetRide. The original schedule called for a six month conformity phase to get Airnet's aircraft onto the PCL operating certificate. After the initial inspections were done on the aircraft the original plan was scraped and the time frame had to be taken out to 12 months. The new plan called for moving the PCL Lears onto the WDR certificate since they didn't want the FEDS scrutinizing the WDR aircraft. The Lear 60's that came over from the WDR side of the equation, were at best, pieces of sh!t. Questionable maintenance, unverifiable FAA/PMA parts, and horrific record keeping. Aside from that, the paint jobs and interiors looked like freighters (which is fine, for freight, but not self loading freight). I remember one WDR tail number in particular that had been dispatched for weeks (under JetRide control) with an autopilot that could only turn left.

 

[Basil]

JetRide was after my time at AirNet, so I can't dispute the mx on those aircraft.

For what it's worth, I will say that the newer Lear-35s that I flew in 91/135 jobs since then seem to have mx issues 2-3 times as often as the AirNet Lears which were older, higher time and flew much more per day.

One more thing- A few months ago, an AirNet Lear was in mx at the FBO where we base our Lear-60 with some sort of hydraulic pump issue. The FBO mx guys mentioned that AirNet wanted to replace many more parts than they thought necessary. That kind of caution doesn't sound like a place that weighs mx vs cost.