It all depends what you call illegal charter or grey charter . Take an airworthy helicopter and an experienced CPL you have potentially a very safe flight . Adding an AOC or signed lease documents does not , I believe , make it safer ! I would guess that there are far more grey flights and lease flights going on every day than there are AOC flights ... and guess what ? Yes , it will continue to grow right until there are no AOC,s left , other than those doing £2500+ per hr twin operations . I certainly have seen no evidence at all that professionally conducted
non AOC commercial flights pose any more risk than any others .