An airplane can be an expensive asset to own. For this reason, aircraft owners will often lease their planes out when they are not in use.
U.S. flights just broke a safety record
Despite the bad publicity commercial airlines have received lately, flying has been relatively safe for passengers in the United States. Fortune stated that for the last nine years, 100 million U.S. operated flights, carrying billions of people, have landed without a passenger death from an accident. That was a record for the modern aviation industry. However, the streak was broken in April when an engine on a Southwest Airlines flight exploded, throwing shrapnel that killed a passenger.
