When the FAA pulled the trigger on AMI Jet Charter and TAG Aviation USA last month, a silence settled over the land that was almost reminiscent of the empty skies after 9/11. Many in business aviation had been aware for months that the feds were going after AMI/TAG with a perplexing intensity, but nobody was saying anything publicly. AMI/TAG suffered what appeared to be an attack of a thousand indeterminate cuts, silently and privately lest it incite an escalation to major gashes. Others looked on as AMI/TAG endured, silently too lest they attract similar attention.
Such was the background to the October 4 and October 12 suspension and revocation of AMI’s Part 135 certificate, but the FAA’s published “case” on AMI did little to dispel the mystery about the motivation for what had come to be regarded as its witch hunt against one of the stronger players in the charter business. If, in the wake of the Challenger accident at Teterboro in February 2005, the FAA set out to spook the whole charter community it could not have done so more effectively. Had the agency merely squashed an obscure “cockroach corner” operator, the charter industry would have shrugged, said he’d had it coming and carried on. Apparently the FAA was convinced that business as usual was not squeaky clean enough.
More In Charter & Fractional
