In its reporting of near collisions this year, the major media often referred to the low number of “commercial plane crashes” while addressing issues at the nation’s major airports.
In this use, the term “commercial” referred not to the totality of different ways in which aircraft fly for hire, but rather large passenger and cargo airlines operating under Part 121.
While this is a definition the general public recognizes, it is not how the industry actually works and removes a large swath of commercial aviation from the flight safety discussion. In particular, it ignores the more than 2,000 commercial Part 135 operators, especially those that fly cargo.
Despite its enormous impact, the Part 135 cargo industry is easy to miss. Outside of Alaska, the flights generally occur at night, in single-engine aircraft, traveling to and from small airports.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Aviation Accident Database counts 439 total Part 135 accidents in the U.S. between January 2013 and December 2022. More than 30 percent of them, or 161 accidents, occurred in Alaska, where the lack of a statewide road system results in an outsized dependence on small commuters and air taxis, most of which combine cargo and passenger operations.
Cargo’s Contribution to Part 135 Accidents
For the period, the NTSB’s Part 135 figures without Alaska leave a total of 278 accidents to analyze. The board does not classify passenger and cargo operators separately, but a careful review of those accidents shows 62, or 22 percent, involved cargo operators.
They occurred in places like Moab, Waterville, Rhinelander, Victoria, and Durango and cover 30 states, with Texas having the most at nine and Wisconsin, Utah, and Colorado following with four each. Overall in the lower 48, 18 cargo pilots died (plus one passenger on a non-revenue flight) and four suffered serious injuries on the job. In two Part 91 accidents that involved training or positioning, an additional three pilots were killed.
The company with the most accidents is Ameriflight, with eight, one of which was fatal. Martinaire Aviation has crashed six times, with four resulting in pilots killed.
A popular aircraft choice for Part 135 cargo operators is the Cessna Caravan. Sixteen of the turboprop singles have been involved in accidents. There were also eight Beech 99s, five Fairchild Metroliners, and four Beech 1900s. Almost all of the accidents involve single-pilot operations. Copilots were aboard in only six of the accidents, including two of the fatal accidents.
In a 2017 Air Cargo Carriers Shorts 330 accident, both pilots were killed when an improper circling approach was attempted at Charleston, West Virginia followed by the captain’s excessive descent rate on approach. In 2019, the captain was killed and the copilot seriously injured when a Conquest Air Convair C131 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean after the captain elected to continue the flight from the Bahamas to South Florida despite a malfunctioning left propeller control; a dual engine failure followed for unknown reasons. In both of these cases, the copilots had about 650 total hours.
Analyzing Part 135 probable causes shows the accidents happened for a variety of reasons: because pilots improperly calculated fuel load, forgot to lower the landing gear, suffered from spatial disorientation, or lost control on takeoff or landing. Six of them suffered a mechanical failure and three involved collisions with ground vehicles (blame assigned to the vehicle drivers in those cases). Overwhelmingly, pilot error is the common theme, but there are reasonable questions to be raised concerning scheduling, training, and maintenance.
For example, in January 2013, a Cessna Caravan pilot for Martinaire stopped in Pellston, Michigan for fuel and cargo. Employees at the FBO noted he mentioned a “quick turn” before departing in night visual meteorological conditions right before 8 p.m. The aircraft crashed into the trees roughly one minute later; the pilot died. He had 2,000 hours of flight time and was hired by the company in late November; he was cleared for solo flights there three days prior to the accident. The probable cause was “inadvertent controlled descent into terrain due to spatial disorientation.”
In October 2015, a Cessna 210 ran out of fuel about two miles from its destination of Boise, Idaho and landed gear-up on Interstate 84. The SP Aircraft pilot, who told investigators he was on a “time-sensitive” flight, was distracted by paperwork and failed to switch tanks while en route from Spokane, Washington.
He further described a “high workload” while on descent and did not use his descent checklist. The probable cause found improper fuel management but while interviewing the company chief pilot, he professed surprise, noting his employees were all experienced pilots who should “know how to manage fuel.” The pilot had 1,490 hours.
On June 7, 2020, a Mitsubishi MU-2 pilot for McNeeley Air Service was killed on takeoff from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The pilot had an estimated 22,000 hours and also served as the company director of operations.
A charter with cargo won on a bid from freight forwarder Active Aero, the McNeeley pilot departed Everett, Washington at 9:16 p.m. on June 6 and later diverted to Sioux Falls due to weather, arriving at 1:40 a.m. He waited on the ground for three hours before departing at 4:30 a.m. and crashed immediately after.
Reviewing his actions over the previous two days, investigators found he was at his desk in Arkansas at 8:30 a.m. on June 5, departing hours later at 4 p.m. and arriving in Everett, after a stop in Nebraska, at 11:21 p.m. He was in communication with the company starting at 9 a.m. the morning of the 6th, with a break that afternoon, then more communication starting around 8 p.m. until his departure at 9:16 p.m. It was impossible to know if he slept that afternoon. The NTSB calculated he was on duty for about 19 hours prior to the accident; his final destination was more than one and a half hours from Sioux Falls. Investigators determined the probable cause was due to loss of control on takeoff for unknown reasons.
Working with the Big Carriers
It is difficult to tell from the various accident reports if negative relationships existed between the aircraft operators and the freight companies contracting them for transportation. Investigators do not make a habit of noting if the companies worked for FedEx, UPS, or others at the time of the accidents and if so, how formalized those business relationships might be (feeder airlines, contract carriers, or occasional charter operations). They also rarely ask company principals about the contracts.
There was a hint of pressure in a December 2016 fatality crash of a Key Lime Metroliner that encountered severe weather while flying IFR from Panama City, Florida, to Albany, Georgia. The flight was scheduled to depart at 9:30 p.m., but an hour prior the pilot informed company flight followers that he was “holding on the ground” due to weather.
At 9:40 p.m., UPS contacted Key Lime dispatch to check on the flight, noting that if departure did not occur shortly, the cargo “would not make service.”
The pilot was immediately made aware of the call and responded that he would depart immediately. He was in the air at 9:54 p.m. but by 10:15 p.m. was discussing with ATC a deviation from his planned route due to weather. Minutes later he declared he would be turning back to Tallahassee, and ATC recommended a 180-degree heading which he accepted. The radar showed he entered a right turn at 10:20 p.m., which continued through 540 degrees before radar contact was lost. The probable cause of the accident was the pilot’s decision to “initiate and continue flight into known adverse weather conditions which resulted in spatial disorientation…”
The pilot had 8,541 hours of total time with 4,670 in the Metroliner. He was the sole pilot based in Panama City and had been flying the route, scheduled five nights a week, for eight years. According to the Key Lime technical programs director, while flight cancelations for weather did not count “against carrier reliability metrics” per its cargo feeder contract with UPS, the company was only paid when the aircraft was flying. Following the accident, Key Lime ceased to operate the route; they were not asked why.
There are several accidents in 2021 and 2022 that are still under investigation, including a fatal crash in Thomson, Georgia that killed both pilots of a Fan Jet Falcon (Falcon 20) for Sierra West; a Metroliner crash in Bedford, New Hampshire that killed the Castle Aviation pilot; a Gem Air crash in Boise, Idaho that killed the Cessna Caravan pilot; a Freight Runners Express accident in Milwaukee, a Corporate Air accident in Salt Lake City, and an Ameriflight crash in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. Additionally, in 2023, Ameriflight crashed in Lansing, Wisconsin, and Kamaka Air crashed in Kualapuu, Hawaii, resulting in a serious injury.
There were two cargo Part 91 accidents: on January 23, a Central Air Southwest pilot was seriously injured in Alabama on a positioning flight, and on August 22, there was a Wiggins Airways Beech 99 training accident near Litchfield, Maine that killed both pilots.
After analyzing these statistics and reading dozens of accident reports, it is fair to conclude that Part 135 cargo pilots occupy a profession that for all its technological advancements remains fundamentally similar to what Antoine de Saint-Exupery described nearly one hundred years ago.
“Sometimes,” he wrote of the mail pilot in his slim novel Night Flight, “he encountered a lonely farmhouse that seemed to be sailing backward from him in a great prairie sea, with its freight of human lives; and he saluted with his wings this passing ship.” It’s a poetic description of a still largely invisible job that is chronically taken for granted and yet irrefutably important.