The exponential growth of fractional ownership of business aircraft poses an almost infinitesimally small threat to corporate flight departments, according to data gathered by AvData, Inc. and Aviation Research Group/US (ARG/US). In addition, their data shows that the safety record of fractional operations is unsurpassed in general, Part 135 or business aviation.

Research conducted by AvData, Inc. has found just 23 corporate flight departments that have shut down for good to go to fractional ownership, said AvData president John Zimmerman. Meanwhile, there are more than 8,660 corporate flight departments in the U.S. "Even if there's 20 more that we can't find, that's just 43. Forty-three compared to 8,000 is just a blip," he said.

Fractional ownership programs get a bad rap on department closures, he said. "Flight departments have always closed. Some close because the parent company starts losing money. Sometimes the company gets bought out by a bigger company that already has a flight department. Sometimes it gets bought out by a company that doesn't believe in corporate aviation. These closures have always happened and always will happen."

Zimmerman said his research shows that when flight departments do sell off their aircraft, the aircraft don't exit the fleet. "For example, Burlington Northern Railroad sold its Gulfstream II to Lacy Aviation, its G-III to Sybron International, and its Westwind to Doughty Management Corp. That's three flight departments when there was only one."

ARG/US president Joe Moeggenberg said fractional operations have racked up a spectacular safety record. "Since fractional programs began in 1986, they have flown 776,000 hours for about 300 million miles" he said. "According to NTSB incident reports, there have been three incidents or accidents in that time and zero fatalities."
That gives fractionals an incident per 100,000 flight hours rate of 0.0391--four times better than scheduled Part 135 operations (1.559); 7.5 times better than unscheduled Part 135 operations (3.11); and 18 times better than general aviation (7.12). Fractionals' safety rate is bested only by Part 121 operators, and then only slightly: Part 121's rate is 0.262.

Zimmerman said there are about 1,600 fractional owners in five programs, operating about 330 aircraft. The business aviation community as a whole has upwards of 19,000 aircraft in its fleet, he said.