On the 2019 federal data, no — private and on-demand charter flying is not safer than commercial airline service. Part 135 on-demand charter operators recorded an accident rate of 0.903 per 100,000 flight hours, against 0.202 for Part 121 scheduled airlines, roughly five times higher.
Charter flew about a fifth of the hours and produced 34 deaths to the airlines’ four. The FAA’s April 2024 Safety Management Systems rule is the first structural fix aimed at that gap; whether it has moved the numbers is not yet answerable from public data.
Book a seat on a Gulfstream and you’re buying a lot of things: a schedule that bends to yours, a terminal without a queue, a cabin where the only other passenger is your colleague. Safety is usually assumed to be part of the package. The 2019 federal accident data says otherwise.
That year, US scheduled airlines under 14 CFR Part 121 logged 36 accidents across roughly 19.8 million flight hours. On-demand charter operators under Part 135 logged 34 accidents across 3.76 million hours — nearly the same accident count from a fifth of the flying.
The number that tends to stick isn’t the rate. It’s the fatalities: 34 deaths in Part 135 on-demand operations against four in scheduled airline service. Charter flew a fraction of the hours and produced roughly eight times the deaths.
This isn’t a story about reckless operators. It’s a story about two rulebooks — and about a fix that only arrived in April 2024.
What the 2019 numbers actually show
Two categories, one year, and a rate that isn’t close. Scheduled Part 121 carriers posted an accident rate of 0.202 per 100,000 flight hours in 2019. On-demand Part 135 charter operators posted 0.903 — about five times the airline figure.
The raw accident counts look similar at a glance, which is exactly why the rate carries the argument. Both categories landed in the mid-30s, but the airlines got there over roughly five times the exposure.
Fatal accidents sharpen the picture further. Part 135 on-demand operations recorded 13 of them in 2019. The scheduled dataset used here doesn’t carry a matching fatal-accident count, so the table below leaves that cell unmarked rather than borrowing a figure from a different definition.
One thing the federal data cannot do is adjust for passenger load. No public comparison converts the 2019 fatality totals into a per-passenger rate, because passenger counts aren’t published alongside flight hours. Exposure by flight hours is the comparison that holds up.
There’s a trap in the source material worth naming. A separate NTSB 2019 summary reports 40 Part 121 accidents and 42 combined Part 135 commuter and on-demand accidents.
Those are broader category totals under different definitions. Substituting them for the 36 and 34 figures would quietly change what’s being compared.
| Category | Accidents | Flight hours | Accident rate per 100,000 flight hours | Fatal accidents | Fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part 121 scheduled air carriers | 36 | Approximately 19.8 million | 0.202 | Not verified in the supplied federal rate dataset | 4 |
| Part 135 on-demand charter | 34 | 3.76 million | 0.903 | 13 | 34 |
| Source: National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) | |||||
Part 121 versus Part 135: where the rulebooks diverge
The gap isn’t a statistical accident. It’s written into the rules. 14 CFR Part 135, which governs on-demand charter, is less demanding on safety and operations than the Part 121 framework scheduled airlines fly under.
Part 135 covers more than the jets most travelers picture. Air taxis, medical services, and charter flights all sit in the category, which is what separates it from scheduled commuter or airline service.
It also doesn’t cover everything people call “private flying.” Non-commercial general aviation falls under Part 91, a separate category entirely. The NTSB’s own Part 135 review deliberately left out Part 91 flights flown by certificate holders — so the 2019 figures say nothing about privately flown, non-commercial aircraft.
That review is worth knowing about. Covering 2010 through 2022, the NTSB’s special investigation examined 116 fatal and 460 nonfatal Part 135 accidents.
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The 2024 SMS rule, and the question it leaves open
After years of NTSB recommendations, the FAA published its Safety Management Systems final rule on April 26, 2024, as Federal Register document 2024-08669. It extends the 14 CFR Part 5 SMS framework to Part 135 operators.
The deadlines are staggered. New applicants filing on or after May 28, 2024 need SMS in place at certification. Operators already flying have until May 28, 2027 to implement it.
What the rule hasn’t produced is outcome data. With the compliance window still open, no completed post-mandate comparison exists — and the NTSB’s investigation, which runs through 2022, draws no conclusion about an accident-rate change after May 2024. Whether the fix is working is genuinely unanswered.
How an SMS actually works — and what it can’t promise
An SMS is something the operator builds and runs itself. It isn’t a piece of equipment, and it isn’t a certificate grade. The FAA oversees certification and surveillance, but the operator owns the system itself: it names who is accountable, logs hazards, evaluates risk before changing how it flies, chooses fixes, and then verifies those fixes hold.
Staff training sits inside that loop. Employees are expected to flag hazards and move that information up the chain, which is the part that separates a functioning SMS from a binder of procedures sitting on a shelf.
The FAA’s review asks only whether the required system exists and functions. It issues no safety rating for passengers to compare. For a traveler, SMS compliance means a formal risk-management process is in place — not that any particular flight is risk-free.
What this means when you book
The premium price does not buy a better safety record. On the 2019 data the opposite is true, and the regulatory gap that produced the disparity was only addressed in 2024.
Practical checks start before money changes hands. Ask the broker for two things: the aircraft’s tail number and the legal Part 135 certificate holder — the brand on the booking site is not the operator. Then check that operator against the FAA’s Part 135 certification records.
Credentials from outside auditors such as ARGUS and IS-BAO can show that an operator’s procedures have been reviewed or that its SMS has matured. They sit on top of FAA certification, not in place of it.
Because the FAA’s public SMS status framework is an operator-compliance process, the direct question is worth asking: is your SMS implemented, and has the declaration of compliance been filed? Missing, evasive, or stale answers are grounds to look elsewhere.
Key terms
- Part 135
- Part 135 is the Federal Aviation Regulations category that governs on-demand and commuter commercial flying, including charter, air-taxi, and air-ambulance operations. It is a lighter regulatory regime than the Part 121 framework scheduled airlines fly under, and it also reaches flights that scheduled service does not. Because Part 135 also covers air-ambulance and air-taxi flying, its safety record reflects a wider slice of commercial aviation than the private-jet charters this article focuses on.
- SMS
- SMS, or Safety Management Systems, is an organization-wide process for identifying hazards, managing safety risk, and confirming that risk controls actually work. The operator runs it while the FAA’s certification and surveillance framework provides oversight, and the FAA assesses whether the system is in place and operating rather than whether any single flight is risk-free. Because SMS is a process rather than a piece of equipment, an operator can hold a certificate without its safety system being fully mature, which is why third-party credentials matter.
- NTSB
- The National Transportation Safety Board is the federal agency that investigates civil aviation accidents and issues safety recommendations. It investigates and recommends, but it does not write or enforce the rules — that is the FAA’s role. The board’s Part 135 findings carry weight because the FAA is not obliged to adopt its recommendations, and the 2024 SMS rule is a case where it did.
- ARGUS
- ARGUS is a third-party aviation credential that can show an operator’s procedures have been audited. It is issued outside the FAA’s own certification process, so it adds independent evidence rather than replacing federal oversight. For a traveler vetting a charter operator, an ARGUS credential is one of the few outside signals available, since the FAA publishes no consumer-facing safety score.
- IS-BAO
- IS-BAO is a third-party credential that can indicate an operator’s safety-management system has matured. Like ARGUS, it comes from outside the FAA and supplements rather than substitutes for federal certification. Because the 2024 SMS rule sets only a minimum standard, an IS-BAO credential can suggest an operator has gone further than compliance requires.
Reporting by
Questions? Answers.
How many private jets crash a year?
The closest federal figure for 2019 is 34 accidents across Part 135 on-demand operations, the category that includes charter and air-taxi flights. That category is not the same as all private flying, and the number covers a single year rather than an annual average.
Why are so many private jets crashing?
The NTSB’s special investigation into Part 135 operations reviewed 116 fatal and 460 nonfatal accidents between 2010 and 2022 — a volume that reflects a lighter regulatory regime than scheduled airlines face. The FAA’s 2024 rule extended the 14 CFR Part 5 SMS framework to Part 135 operators in response.
Is a private jet safer than a commercial airline?
On the 2019 federal data, no. Part 135 on-demand charter recorded an accident rate of 0.903 per 100,000 flight hours against 0.202 for Part 121 scheduled carriers — about five times higher. Charter logged 34 accidents and 34 fatalities that year; scheduled airlines logged 36 accidents and four fatalities.
Does the FAA’s 2024 SMS rule require flight-data-monitoring equipment for Part 135 operators?
No. The 2024 rule extends Safety Management Systems requirements to Part 135 operators but does not mandate flight-data-monitoring equipment for them.
