Private Flights Are 5 Times More Lethal Than Commercial Airliners

Charter and corporate flights have crashed five times more often than commercial airliners in the U.S. in recent years.

In a report on the problems faced by private airliners, Bloomberg reports that there have been 62 fatal crashes of private planes since 2000, compared to 13 passenger planes. While the overall number of casualties in that time is greater on passenger planes (presumably since they carry more people), in the period just since 2007 there have actually been more deaths on corporate and charter flights. That indicates that the problem may only be getting worse.

Eighty-eight percent of the time, investigators say, crashes of private planes are due to pilot error.

[Bloomberg]