The Hidden Risks of Chartered Planes

○ Seekers of the jet-set life at a discount price potentially face fatal consequences using illicit operators

- Alan Levin

In 2018, Marci Wilhelm, after the $195 million sale of the health-care company she’d helped found, decided to celebrate by taking a trip from her Florida home to Nantucket. She and her husband chartered a plane through Air America Flight Services Inc. and planned to stop in South Carolina to pick up friends along the way. What Wilhelm didn’t know was that the plane, a Dassault Falcon 50 business jet, was overdue for dozens of routine maintenance tasks and had malfunctioning brakes, and it never should’ve been in service, according to investigators and court records.

When the jet touched down on the runway in Greenville, South Carolina, the pilots realized something was terribly wrong. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Where are the brakes? Where are the brakes?” said lead pilot John Caswell, according to a transcript of the black-box cockpit recorder.

The plane raced off the runway, went off an embankment and broke into pieces. Wilhelm was knocked unconscious, still strapped into her seat, which was partially outside the jet. “I woke up face down,” she says. She and her husband sustained critical injuries. The pilots—who lacked proper certification—died. The owner of the charter company was one of the pilots, and his sons surrendered its Federal Aviation Administration certificate days later.