Sunfish
The regulatory standards applicable to RPT are different, and in most cases higher, than the regulatory standards applicable to Charter, irrespective of the size of the organisations.
That’s why the questions as to what’s Charter and what’s RPT (and, what’s Aerial Work and what’s Private) are so controversial.
That’s one of the reasons ‘little’ operators try to squeeze every drop of legal blood out of the definition of Charter in CAR 206, and CASA frequently tries to work out whether a ‘charter’ operation is really an RPT operation.
That’s why Commissioner Staunton recommended CAR 206 be urgently reviewed … 15 or so years ago.
Forget the size of the organisation. Let’s take equally sized organisations: one is authorised to conduct Charter and not RPT, and the other is authorised to conduct RPT.
The RPT operator will be obliged to have an approved system of maintenance and an approved maintenance controller for each aircraft operated in RPT; the Charter operator won’t be obliged to have either (unless the aircraft is already transport category – unlikely at the small end of town).
The aircraft operated by RPT operators will in most cases be built to higher airworthiness and performance standards than most of the aircraft operated by Charter operators. This is a whole world of regulatory pain about which Gaunty might like to opine.
The pilots flying RPT routes will have to be checked, on the routes authorised to be flown, before the pilots are inflicted on fare paying passengers; the pilots flying Charter won’t necessarily have ever flown the route before fare paying pax get on board (and in some cases, this is one of the conundrums facing regulators: by definition, an operator might be asked to take someone on a route the operator hasn’t been before).
The aerodromes to which RPT aircraft operate have to be certified to a higher standard than the aerodromes to which Charter aircraft are permitted to operate. (Again, a conundrum facing regulators: how to get people to places that haven’t been certified to that standard.)
So please Sunfish, come to grips with this fact: A punter walking on to a Charter aircraft flying from A to B is walking into an operation that is subject to lower regulatory standards than a punter walking into an RPT aircraft flying from A to B. It might be that the actual standards met by both operations are the same, and that both operators will get punters from A to B alive, but that outcome would be the result of a mere coincidence, not regulatory standard equivalence.