The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed a $3.3m civil penalty against Hinman for operating hundreds of commercial flights in violation of the Federal Aviation Regulations.
According to the FAA, Hinman, which flew a Beechcraft Beechjet 400A and a Hawker 900XP aircraft through its subsidiary Hincojet, does not have the required operator certificate for the flights concerned.
Under section 91 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, Hinman was granted permission to charge some expenses for each flight under the timeshare agreements, including fuel, oil and lubricants.
However, the FAA claims that Hinman charged extra expenses for 850 flights.
The FAA also alleges that Hinman double-billed its timeshare clients for various legs of several trips.
In its investigation, the agency found that on 30 September 2015, Hinman charged a client for a trip aboard its Hawker aircraft from Connecticut to North Carolina and then to Florida.
On the same day, the company charged a different client aboard the same aircraft for a round-trip from Kalamazoo to Detroit, and back to Kalamazoo.
According to the FAA, the aircraft could not have performed all of the flights in a single day.
In a statement, the FAA said: “The FAA alleges that because it was charging more than the expenses allowed under Part 91, Hinman should have been operating these flights under Part 135, which applies to commercial operations.
“As a result, Hinman failed to meet the FAA’s Part 135 requirements for record keeping, including pilot records and load manifests, for each flight.”
According to the FAA, Hinman does not have any Part 135 training programme, so the pilots of those flights were not authorised.
The company has been given 30 days to respond.