“Private jets are far more dangerous than flying commercial.”
US accident statistics are sliced by regulation, not by whether the passengers are rich. Scheduled airlines fly under Part 121, on-demand charter under Part 135, and corporate or owner-flown aircraft under Part 91.
The NTSB and industry analysts have consistently found that Part 121 airlines have the lowest accident rate of any segment, at fractions of one accident per 100,000 flight hours. Part 135 on-demand operations have run higher — in the low single digits per 100,000 hours in many years — though jets specifically do far better than the helicopter and piston-aircraft segments that share the category. Professionally flown corporate jets (a subset of Part 91) have posted rates that rival the airlines; a widely cited 2011 comparison put corporate flying at 0.061 accidents per 100,000 hours against 0.175 for the airlines that year.
What genuinely raises risk: single-pilot operations in demanding weather, short unfamiliar runways, and operators with thin safety cultures. What lowers it: two-crew cockpits, third-party safety audits (ARGUS, Wyvern, IS-BAO) and modern avionics. A reputable charter on a modern jet is very safe; it is simply not identical to a scheduled airliner, and it is honest to say so.