Jet Company Allegedly Risked Celebrity Passengers' Lives for Cheap Fuel

[RamboLiberal]

Source: ABC News

Five executives of a luxury private jet company and a pilot were indicted in New Jersey federal court on charges that include recklessly endangering the lives of wealthy passengers by dangerously over-fueling charter jets operated by the firm. Those passengers - who paid individual charter fees of up to $90,000 at times - included Beyonce, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Harvey Weinstein and renowned crime writer Patricia Cornwell, ABC News has learned.

According to a 23-count federal indictment, the executives and the pilot conspired to endanger their passengers' lives by methods that included over-fueling their planes at airports where fuel costs were low and then attempting to take off, even though the planes' weights exceeded "maximum allowable takeoff and landing weights" and shifted the aircrafts' centers of gravity dangerously forward.

On February 2, 2005, the indictment alleges, these practices resulted in a Bombardier Challenger business jet charted by the company crashing upon attempting to take off at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport.

20 people were injured in the crash which resulted in the plane skidding off a runway, through an airport fence and across a busy highway, where 20 cars were stopped at a red light. The plane then crashed into a warehouse, where it was engulfed in flames. Only the coincidence of the red-light, published accounts noted, prevented a disaster with a massive casualty count.

The Jan. 23 indictment was unsealed today with the arrest of at least four of the executives, including the company's CEO, co-founder and chief pilot Michael Brassington, and his brother Paul Brassington, the company VP and cofounder. The pilot of the plane involved in the crash was still being sought.



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6805353&page=1

[Turbineguy]

1. Considering how much it costs to carry fuel

I have to wonder just how much they expected to save.

I remember telling a shipping company we carried 1000 more tons of fuel than we needed and it cost 1000 tons of fuel per year to do so. They ordered more fuel.

[Demeter]

2. There Are No Epithets Strong Enough

and no jail terms long enough.

[PSPS]

3. Was the word "celebrity" required in the headline to make ABC consider this newsworthy?

The implication is that if only "the little people" were involved, it wouldn't be important.

[EFerrari]

4. Yes, it was.

And how gross is that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Yes - they put the 'risk' in the headline, and just mentioned later 20 people were really injured

but they don't get name-checked, presumably because there was no-one famous on board that day. :eyes: Headline should have been "Jet Company Allegedly Injured 20, Risked Lives for Cheap Fuel".