Charter Flight Crashes: What Passengers and Families Need to Know

Was It Really a Charter Flight? Why the Category Matters to Your Case

A charter flight is, in plain terms, a flight booked for a particular trip rather than a seat bought on a published airline schedule. Federal aviation regulations sort flights into categories, and charter flying sits in its own one.

The rule that defines that category is 14 C.F.R. § 135.1. It says Part 135 prescribes rules governing "the commuter or on-demand operations of each person who holds or is required to hold an Air Carrier Certificate or Operating Certificate under part 119." The same section reaches further than the operator itself. It also covers, among other things, each person employed or used by a certificate holder, "including the maintenance, preventative maintenance and alteration of an aircraft"; each person on board an aircraft operated under the part; certain commercial air tours; and helicopter air ambulance operations.

A charter (Part 135) operator is a company that holds, or is required to hold, one of those certificates to fly on-demand or commuter operations. These include on-demand charter companies, air taxi services and, depending on how the arrangement is set up, fractional ownership programs. The aircraft range from piston and turboprop twins to light and mid-size jets and turbine helicopters. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the federal agency that certifies operators, describes its process on its air carrier certification page.

Two other categories come up in nearly every charter case. Part 121 governs scheduled air carriers, the airlines that sell seats on published routes. Part 91 governs general operations, including private, non-commercial flying, such as an owner flying his own plane. The site's pages on small plane crashes and private jet crashes explain the Part 91 side of that line.

The category shapes which rules applied to the flight, who was expected to follow them, and therefore who may bear responsibility. It is not always obvious: a flight sold by one company may be operated by another, and a flight that looked private may have been flown for hire. For a family, which category the flight fell under is often the first factual question, and a conversation with an attorney can help sort out how the booking, the operator and the certificate fit together.

What Caused the Crash — and Why That Question Takes Time to Answer

Investigators usually describe a charter accident first by its mechanism, meaning the kind of event that happened, before reaching the question of why it happened. Knowing the mechanism helps a family understand which questions are likely to follow.

• Controlled flight into terrain: an aircraft flying normally, under the crew's control, is flown into the ground, water or an obstacle. This raises questions about the crew, the operator's procedures and the information available to the pilots.
• Loss of control in flight: the aircraft departs from controlled flight, whether from a stall, a spin or an upset the crew cannot recover from.
• Weather: charter flights often go to smaller airports on short notice, and weather questions include flight into instrument meteorological conditions (cloud, fog or low visibility where a pilot must fly by instruments) and icing on the airframe.
• Mechanical and maintenance events: engine failure, flight-control problems and structural issues. An engine failure raises questions about maintenance, the engine's design and manufacture, or both.
• Runway excursions and ground accidents: an aircraft leaving the runway on takeoff or landing may raise questions about the airport, the conditions or the aircraft's systems.

None of these mechanisms proves anyone's fault, and none proves a defect. Naming a mechanism describes what happened, not why. For a specific crash, cause is determined by investigation, and the only statements this page makes about a particular accident are the ones the NTSB's own records make. If a family member's flight is still under investigation, the honest answer to "what caused it" may be that no one has said yet — a normal stage, not a dead end.

In practical terms, the mechanism points to which party's records are likely to matter, so a useful question for a family to ask early is what kind of event the preliminary information describes.

What the NTSB Investigation Decides — and What It Cannot Decide for Your Case

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is the independent federal agency that investigates civil aviation accidents. Its work is about finding out what happened and preventing the next accident, not about deciding who owes whom in a lawsuit. Its investigations page is where its accident records are published.

An NTSB aviation investigation usually moves through stages. A preliminary report comes first and is an early factual summary. Factual material follows, gathered into a public docket. The investigation ends with a final report and a probable cause, which is the NTSB's own statement of what it found most likely caused the accident.

A preliminary report is not a finding of cause. When an investigation is open, the NTSB has not determined a probable cause, and anything said about cause before then is not the NTSB's conclusion.

Federal law then draws a line that surprises many families. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(b), "No part of a report of the Board, related to an accident or an investigation of an accident, may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report." In other words, even a final NTSB report with a stated probable cause cannot itself be used to prove a civil damages case about that accident.

That does not leave a civil case without facts. The underlying records that exist independently of the report, such as maintenance logs, operator documents and witness accounts, are a separate matter, and the parties to a civil case develop their own evidence. The FAA certificates Part 135 operators and enforces airworthiness and operating rules, and its records about the operator and the aircraft are often part of the picture.

The practical result is that the NTSB's work and a civil claim run on separate tracks. Knowing the investigation's current status helps explain what is publicly known so far, and what still is not.

Injuries, Wrongful Death and What the Law May Cover

Charter aircraft are smaller than airliners, and injuries in a crash can be severe. Injuries reported after aviation accidents include traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, burns, smoke inhalation, crush and blast injuries, and broken bones. Many survivors also live with psychological injury, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This page describes these only as categories; it does not offer medical guidance.

When a passenger or crew member does not survive, the legal claim is called wrongful death: a claim brought by or for the family of a person whose death was caused by someone else's wrongful conduct. Who may bring that claim, and what losses it may cover, are set by the law that applies, and that law differs from state to state.

Damages rules follow the same pattern. Whether the law may allow medical expenses, lost earnings, pain and suffering or other categories, and whether any limits apply, depend on the state whose law governs, the facts and the evidence. Where a death occurs over the ocean, federal law may enter the picture through the Death on the High Seas Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30301, the short title of a chapter of federal maritime law addressing deaths on the high seas. Whether it reaches a given flight depends on where the death occurred and on the statute's own terms.

For someone who was hurt, the records that usually matter include emergency and hospital records, follow-up treatment records, records of time missed from work, and photos of injuries over time. Families after a death often gather the death certificate, records of the person's work and earnings, and records showing who depended on that person. These documents later connect what happened in the air to what changed on the ground.

Who May Be Responsible After a Charter Flight Crash

Responsibility after a charter crash is sorted by type of party, and more than one may be involved. Whether any of them is responsible depends on the facts and on what the investigation and the evidence show. This page names no company.

The charter operator is the usual starting point. A Part 135 operator flies under a certificate and is subject to federal rules on crews, maintenance and operations. A claim against an operator is usually a negligence claim, which asks four things: whether the operator owed a duty, whether it breached that duty, whether the breach caused the harm, and what damages resulted. Fractional ownership programs may be treated like operators depending on how the arrangement is structured.

Manufacturers come in through product liability, the body of law that asks whether a product was defective in its design, its manufacture or its warnings, and whether that defect caused the harm. That framework can reach the maker of the aircraft and the makers of engines, components and avionics. A crash does not prove a defect; the question is answered by evidence.

Maintenance providers may face negligence claims about how an aircraft was inspected, repaired or returned to service; Part 135 itself covers persons used by a certificate holder for maintenance. Fuel suppliers and ground handlers may face negligence claims too, where the facts point their way.

The United States can be a party where the claim involves federal employees, such as air traffic controllers. Those claims proceed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a federal chapter whose definitions section, 28 U.S.C. § 2671, defines a "Federal agency" to include executive departments and independent establishments of the United States, but not "any contractor with the United States." That distinction can matter where a service was performed by a contractor rather than a federal employee.

When several parties may share responsibility, how fault is divided depends on the applicable state or federal law, and comparative fault rules differ from state to state.

Which Records Can Show What Happened — and Who Holds Them

During an active investigation, the NTSB controls much of the physical evidence, including the wreckage, the flight data recorder (which records the aircraft's flight parameters) and the cockpit voice recorder (which records sound in the cockpit).

Federal law also limits how recorder material reaches a civil case. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(a), a party in a judicial proceeding generally may not use discovery to obtain a cockpit recorder recording, or any part of a recorder transcript or still image the NTSB has not made public. A court may allow it only after an in camera review (a private review by the judge) and a decision that the public material is not enough for a fair trial and more is necessary. In addition to that showing, a court may allow discovery of an unreleased transcript, or require its production for an in camera review, only if the recording itself is not available. When a court does allow discovery, it must issue a protective order limiting use to the proceeding, and anything admitted into evidence must be placed under seal.

Other records sit outside those limits:

• NTSB public docket: factual records, witness statements and maintenance records submitted to the investigation.
• FAA records: the operator's certificate, maintenance records and airworthiness directives (FAA orders requiring specific inspections or fixes) for the aircraft.
• Operator records: crew training records, duty-time logs, dispatch records and weight-and-balance documents.
• Family and survivor records: medical records, photos and video from the scene or from passengers' phones, booking confirmations and emails, and the names and contact details of witnesses.

The family's own records are the ones most within reach, and they help show who sold the flight, who flew it and what people saw — which is why keeping booking emails, phone photos and witness contact details intact matters from the start.

Questions Families Often Bring to a First Conversation

Many families bring a short list of questions to a first conversation: whether the flight was operated under a Part 135 certificate or a different category, what the NTSB investigation's current status is, whether the flight crossed state lines or flew over international waters, what insurance the operator carried, and which state's law may apply, including its limitation periods and damages rules. These are questions worth having answered, not a test to pass. For those who want to talk through what exists in their situation, a case evaluation with our attorney is available.

This page does not set out any state's deadlines, and it does not cover scheduled airline accidents, which the site treats on their own pages, such as those about corporate jet crashes and other flight types.