For Jet Linx private jets, safety is more than a management style – it’s a promise.

You probably check your car each time you drive: glance at the gas gauge, make sure the rear view mirror is in position or scan your tires as you walk through the garage. Each of these routine checks helps ensure your safe journey and arrival at your destination. Even when you aren’t behind the wheel – or in the cockpit – you can rest assured knowing Jet Linx takes the most conservative approach to safety guidelines, exceeding standard protocols and making every effort to ensure you, your family and your business associates arrive safely.

“Our dispatching system far exceeds the norm,” said Kari Johnson (right), Jet Linx Aviation’s Director of Safety. “We aren’t flying the same routes day in and day out, so that takes more analysis and risk assessment. We do a threat check on virtually every nuance of the flight: private jets require a lot more detail.” Jet Linx partners with a third-party flight planning company to review all flight plans, including weather forecasting.

“Another advantage we have is our access to over a dozen types of different aircraft,” Johnson said. “We can pick and choose the plane that would best serve a particular route, where a commercial airline might only have 737s and fly them for every route.” Instead of always going to a major airport hub, Jet Linx can accommodate many smaller airports with different landing distances. “We can choose an airplane that’s designed for shorter landing distances if we need to,” Johnson added.

Selecting the right plane for the route goes a long way toward ensuring safety, but the pilots and maintenance staff play a key role in continuing Jet Linx’s commitment to safety. “With other operators, it is more common to have one pilot who is captain qualified, and one who’s at a lower rank. With Jet Linx, our pilots often have the same type-rating. If you have one pilot at a lower rank, sometimes that makes the second pilot more hesitant to speak up if they sense something out of the ordinary, but we don’t experience that.”

“Our pilots are dedicated to one specific aircraft, so they know all the nuances of that aircraft. In other companies, pilots move around from plane to plane,” Johnson said. “Our mechanics are assigned a certain aircraft as well, so they will know specifically if there is a repetitive issue. That personal touch, personal concern and personal interest in a particular aircraft really is important. It’s in their interest to keep the aircraft in top shape.”

Jet Linx has created a system to keep all the complex pieces of each flight in motion. “We have a proprietary risk assessment matrix,” Johnson said. “We measure the likelihood of an incident versus the level of severity, and only operate in the most conservative space. Flights happen across the board, at all levels, all the time, but we are much less tolerant of risk. We would rather not operate a flight than operate one that isn’t safe.”

It’s important for Jet Linx to exceed safety standards. “It’s our management style,” Johnson said. “It’s like Jamie Walker [Jet Linx Aviation President & CEO] says, we’re not looking at our business for next quarter, we’re looking at 20 years down the road. We have established a company that’s here for the long run, and we’re recognized in the safety industry as the best of the best,” he added. “Risk is something you must measure for every flight. No flight is the same – you can never take that for granted.”

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2015 issue of SOAR, online now.