Last weekend, we heard the bad news about the tragic plane crash that took the lives of the Polish President, Lech Kaczynsk, his wife and 96 people. If you didn’t hear about the accident, the president and several leaders of the country were traveling to western Russia to attend a memorial when their plane suddenly crashed into trees hidden by dense fog.

The horrific crash took everyone by surprise and launched Poland into a deep state of mourning. We were also deeply saddened to learn about the accident and we send our thoughts and prayers to those affected by the tragedy.

Even though private aviation is the safest form of travel in the world, accidents can still happen when compromising decisions are made that jeopardize air charter safety. For this reason, our jet charter agency analyzes accidents in private aviation to ensure that the same mistakes aren’t made during your air charter flight.

Based on early investigation reports of the accident, we know that the crash was caused by the pilots decision to fly into dense fog despite repeated warnings from air traffic control. If you’re unfamiliar with aviation weather, fog can become a serious issue for pilots when it reduces their ability to see the runway. The pilots in command of the 70-year old Russian airliner disregarded the warnings of thick fog several times and refused to divert to another airport. This caused the pilots to descend below the flight path and accidentally crash into trees hidden by fog.

An integral part of air charter safety is knowing when to abort a flight mission and land at an alternate airport. This particular incident could have been avoided had the pilots diverted to an alternate airport upon first receiving word of the inclement conditions from ATC. Instead, the pilots refused to take the weather seriously, and it ended up costing the lives of everyone aboard the aircraft.

Pilots acquire the ability to determine when to divert to alternate airports through many years of training, strict adherence to FAA regulations and an appreciation of severe weather conditions. In this particular incident, the pilots failed to appreciate the severity of the weather and had the pilots obtained a weather report maybe they would have never attempted to start the engines of the aircraft.

In order to ensure your air charter safety, our jet charter agency offers a free daily weather report system to pilots and our clients. With the weather report, your pilots can stay informed of hazardous weather conditions, such as fog, that can significantly affect your air charter safety. We also offer a personalized weather report for your charter flight that identifies inclement weather conditions along your specific flight. By providing weather information about hazardous weather conditions, we believe that we can help reduce the number of weather-related flight accidents in private aviation.