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Platinum Jet indictment… Another Guyanese granted bail in US courts

Mar 06, 2009 News

Director of Maintenance, Brien McKenzie, and Director of Charters, Joseph Singh, both attached to Platinum Jet, made their first court appearance on Wednesday and were granted bail.
The two men appeared before Judge Joseph Greenaway, Jnr, of the United States District Court in New Jersey.
Singh was granted bail to the tune of US$100,000 which was secured by his mother’s property, while McKenzie was granted bail to the sum of $350,000 which was secured by his brother’s property.
The duo were charged along with President, Chief Executive Officer, chief pilot and co-founder, Michael Brassington; his brother, Vice President and co-founder Paul Brassington; co-founder and managing member Andre Budhan, and a pilot Francis Vieira with “conspiracy to commit continuous wilful violations of regulatory requirements for the operation of commercial charter aircraft”.
Budhan will appear in court on March 9, while the Brassington brothers will appear in Court on March 19.
The indictment claims that they had “routinely undertaken and concealed dangerous fuelling and weight distribution practices which existed on the Platinum-operated jet that failed to lift off at Teterboro on February 2, 2005”.
On that date, the jet left the end of the runway and failed to take off, crossing Route 46, hit traffic along the way, and ran into a clothing warehouse.
The plane was over-fuelled in a manner that caused its centre of gravity to exceed its forward weight limit for takeoff, contributing to the crash, according to the indictment, a practice used by the company to increase profits. The indictment also lists a scheme to defraud the United States by impeding, impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the Federal Aviation Agency to regulate the operation of commercial aircraft in the United States.
“The object of the conspiracy was for the conspirators to enrich themselves by repeatedly violating airline safety and regulatory requirements, while operating Platinum Jet as an on-demand commercial jet charter company.”
Under the indictment, it was pointed out that the defendants misrepresented to charter-flight customers and jet-charter brokers, in documents sent via facsimile and by other means, that Platinum Jet operated in compliance with the Federal Aviation Regulation safety standards.
It was a further part of the conspiracy that, beginning in or about November 2003, Platinum Jet commenced piggybacking on D.A., another charter airline service company located in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Platinum Jet Management, LLC (“Platinum Jet”), with its principal place of operations in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was a private, luxury charter-airline service engaged in the business of operating, maintaining, and managing aircraft, including Canadair CL-600 jet planes.
Platinum Jet used these and other aircraft to provide on-demand domestic and international air-charter services to charter brokers and individual customers paying as much as approximately US$90,000 per charter.
Platinum Jet did not hold a FAA operating certificate authorising it to operate in the United States as an on-demand air charter operation. As such, in 2003, Platinum Jet entered into a ‘piggybacking’ or ‘certificate-sharing’ agreement with D.A. which did have a certificate.
This piggybacking arrangement was to enable Platinum Jet to operate commercial charter flights under D.A.’s certificate, insofar as D.A. maintained operational control over all Platinum Jet flight activities.
In the indictment, it was pointed out that a further part of the conspiracy was that defendants falsified weight-and-balance graphs by manually changing the starting point on those graphs to a different balance of weight (BOW) and centre of gravity, in order to make it appear as if the aircraft were within weight-and-balance limits, when in fact they were not.

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