ACA Forum Probes Broker Role in Fighting Illegal Charter

FAA and industry officials are stressing the need for charter brokers to complete due diligence on charter operators to ensure the flight they are booking is legal.  

Participating on a panel during The Air Charter Association’s U.S. Regional Forum Wednesday in Dallas, Edward Cardenas, a member of the FAA’s Safe Air Charter Team, explained that the agency breaks illegal charter down into two primary categories: those that practice charter but are not certificated operators and those that are certificated but are conducting operations outside the realm of the certificate.

But verifying those operations is more difficult, said Al Mann, chief safety officer for aircraft management and private travel services firm FlyHouse. Mann, who noted that he has spent the past 10 years assessing operators, pointed out that simple verification from ratings agencies may not be enough. He noted that they often come with a caveat that the information is not guaranteed.

“Don’t rely on things like a third party to do your due diligence for you. You have to have that relationship with the operator to do that due diligence and get to the root of whether it’s a true 135 or not,” Mann said.

“Trust and verify,” advised Cardenas. He pointed operators to the FAA Safe Air Charter website, which contains information about illegal charter but also maintains a database of FAA-certificated air charter operators. 

That database was updated every 30 days for some time, and now it is being updated daily, he noted. Brokers can ask for an operator’s D085 or operations specification and compare it against the list. He added that many brokers don’t take steps such as these and sometimes will complete a transaction without any background check.

Brokers are not held to a standard on this yet, Cardenas added, noting that Part 295 governing brokers is vague. “It’s version 1.0 of regulation and hopefully will get better with time and input from industry,” he said, emphasizing that the FAA is listening to industry feedback.

But, Cardenas also told the audience, “You guys have to self-regulate,” adding that the FAA does not have enough staff to monitor all the transactions. “There needs to be a standard in the industry.”

Barry Lambert, executive v-p of Southern Sky Aviation, added that along with the operations specifications, brokers can also check with the Department of Transportation to ensure the operator is actually insured for the trip.

All of this underscores the importance of education, said Joel Fenn, regional private jet director of the Americas for the brokerage Air Charter Service. “We rely heavily on our operators, and with that, relationships with the client and also with the operators are fundamental,” he said. “We can compile all the paperwork, keep them on file, make sure they’re in date, but ultimately, you know, if an operator slips into a 134 and a half to try and make the flight happen without necessarily reporting that back to us, that’s where it’s difficult to keep an eye on [it].”

Fenn added that illegal charter doesn’t just fall on the operator, but on the broker as well. “With there being so many, unfortunately there are some shadier [brokers] out there that damage our reputation in the industry.”

One of the issues that operators and brokers are seeing is potential clients backing away from a transaction, saying, “I’m going to take my friend’s airplane [for charter],” said Renee DeNicola, charter sales professional with Business Jet Services. While Business Jet has recently expanded beyond traditional charter for its management services, this is something it has confronted with new clients, and the company is working through how to manage such scenarios.

Lambert said he sees the same. His company has begun to track such “friends’” operations to ensure that they are legitimate charters. If not, his company will report it to the illegal charter hotline.

Tips into the FAA-maintained hotline have grown to about 400 annually. Joe Kluk, also with the FAA Safe Air Charter Team, stressed the need to include as much information as possible in the hotline. While he understands why many of these reports come in anonymously, it is hard to obtain the proper information if there is no source to follow up with further questions. These complaints may not progress because they lack the proper details.

He noted that having the clients’ names further helps, because the client has the financial documentation to prove an illegal operation.