Michael Brassington, the Guyanese former president of a luxury charter company whose plane ran a Teterboro Airport runway in 2005 put profits ahead of safety in a scheme to overload jets with cheap fuel, a jury ruled yesterday, according to www.jersey.com.
The Bombardier Challenger 600 business jet plowed through a steel perimeter fence and struck two cars as it crossed six lanes of Route 46 before crashing into a clothing warehouse.
The online report said that the jury of seven men and five women returned split verdicts in Newark against the Guyana-born brothers Michael and Paul Brassington who were executives and co-founders of the now-defunct Platinum Jet Management LLC based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
According to the report, Michael Brassington, the company’s former president, was described by prosecutors as the mastermind of a scheme to defraud passengers, charter brokers, the Federal Aviation Administration and others by misrepresenting his company’s compliance with safety regulations.
He was found guilty on the most serious charge of endangering the safety of an aircraft in flight. The jury found him guilty on eight additional charges and cleared him on 12 counts of making false statements.
His younger brother, largely responsible for marketing, was found guilty only of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was acquitted on four other counts.
The charge of endangering the safety of an aircraft in flight, which normally is used in terrorism cases, the report said, related to Michael Brassington’s concealment of dangerous over-fueling and weight distribution practices that caused the jet’s center of gravity to exceed its forward weight limit for takeoff, contributing to the Feb. 2, 2005, Teterboro crash, authorities said.
Prosecutors argued that he misled the flight officer responsible for fueling and preparing the weight and balance graphs by informing him that the plane was 1,000 pounds lighter than it actually was. As a consequence, the report said that the twinjet’s nose failed to lift off at the expected speed, causing the pilot to abort the takeoff as he quickly ran out of runway.
The Bombardier Challenger 600 jet then plowed through a steel perimeter fence and struck two cars as it crossed six lanes of Route 46 before crashing into a clothing warehouse and bursting into flames. Both pilots and two passengers were seriously injured.
In February 2009, four years after the crash, the Brassingtons were arrested at their homes in Fort Lauderdale along with three other Platinum Jet executives and a pilot. Another pilot, who was in control of the plane when it crashed, was later indicted and is awaiting trial in Florida, the report noted.
During the Brassingtons’ trial, www.jersey.com said that U.S. Attorneys accused the brothers of operating a “rogue” charter service that regularly put their rich and famous passengers at risk in order to save money by dangerously over-fueling planes at airports where fuel was cheap. The brothers also were accused of using planes and personnel that were not certified for commercial flights, and falsifying flight logs to conceal violations.
With a client list that included celebrities like rapper Jay-Z, singer-actress Beyoncé, rocker Jon Bon Jovi, basketball star Shaquille O’Neal and football legend Joe Montana, the Brassingtons had no incentive to save pennies on discount fuel, their attorneys argued. The defence also presented testimony that a mechanical problem led to the crash.
Platinum Jet was founded in August 2000 and flew more than 100 charter flights and gathered more than US$3 million in revenue over the next 15 months without the required certificate for commercial operations, prosecutors said, according to the report.
The judge dismissed the charges against one co-defendant, Brian McKenzie, Platinum’s former director of maintenance, after the government rested, while the charges against John Kimberling, who piloted the ill-fated Teterboro flight, were transferred to Florida for trial because of his health, the report added. The other defendants, co-founder and managing member Andre Budhan; director of charters Joseph Singh; and pilot Francis Viera; pleaded guilty to fraud charges before the trial. Budhan and Singh testified for the government.
U.S. District Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh set sentencing for March 17. Paul Brassington faces up to five years in prison while his brother faces a maximum of 20 years on the aircraft-endangerment charge alone, the online report said.
