Insurance WTF Over

[Colonel]

Not sure my insurance went up or not. Didn't look. All I know for sure is that $1M liability
insurance for an elderly Maule - with no accident record, ever - is more expensive than
$1M liability insurance for a Pitts S-2B which includes airshow, air race, competition coverage.

Riddle me that one, Batman. I can only presume that the Maule has such a wretched type
record, which seems believable enough. But I have trouble believing it's any better than
the Pitts, which in addition to being harder to land and quite frequently wrecked doing so,
is also spun into the ground all the time by newbies, unlike the Maule. AFAIK.

[Squaretail]

Its all about those two extra seats. You can take more people with you in the Maule. When I was insuring a 180, they insist that I could be hauling around 5 other people, so it was more risky than the 172. Not sure who you could convince to squeeze in that cargo bin, besides some small and extremely compliant children.

[Colonel]

Nope. We had that discussion. On the form for both Maule and Pitts I said 1 seat other than pilot. Broker tried to up the Maule to three - nope, back seat is out, we don’t carry pax, declined. Nice try though.

[Slick Goodlin]

All this talk of insurance has me cringing over when I finally get around to renewing mine…

[RBK]

Just got my quote. About 11% higher than last year. Apparently homebuilts have had a higher accident rate than the rest of GA and that accounts for a 7% increase. The rest is because I increased the hull value from $80000 to $85000, which is still probably too low. Overall, my insurance cost has more doubled over the past few years when rates started to climb. For our T-hangar complex, the insurance is becoming the largest component of annual expense.

[Colonel]

If you add up your fixed costs for a year - cost of capital, hangarage, insurance, annual - and divide it by the number of hours you fly in a year - what’s the average in Canada, maybe 30? - you will produce an astonishing hourly cost, enough to make a grown man cry.

And that doesn’t include direct hourly costs like fuel, engine and prop reserve, etc.

I know I’m old and cranky but I try really hard not to laugh when a renter tells me he’s going to buy an aircraft to save money.

Hahahhahahahhahhhaahahahahahahahahshha

[Squaretail]

Nope. We had that discussion. On the form for both Maule and Pitts I said 1 seat other than pilot. Broker tried to up the Maule to three - nope, back seat is out, we don’t carry pax, declined. Nice try though.

Hmm, that's the run around I got once. I could make no promises to them that I would not be stuffing a bunch of people into my plane. I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I had even a rear seat passenger in all my personal flying.

Other possibility is Maules have a reputation as "bush" planes, so maybe they assumed you were going to do some off-runway stuff with it. Not sure what to say, insurance companies in my experience don't always make sense. Like one time when I insured a brand new motorcycle and they insisted on inspecting it. I was like "by a mechanic?" they were like no, we want our sales person to inspect it. So there I am in the parking lot with a old lady walking around my bike, and no, she did not ride. WTF was the point of that?

Another possibility is that insurance companies are wanting to know what's in the instrument panel now. I guess they don't want you upgrading your old Narco on their dime, and I had to have those appraised once. Otherwise they were going to assume I had full glass panel to cover which was going to double my rate. Which I suppose is possible, last time I was shopping for airplanes I come across a guy who wanted to sell his 170 for $230K.. because he wanted the money back for the pair of G650s he put in it. Two of them.

[Scudrunner]

Technically the 337 can haul 5 pax around and was told by one that they insure for the number of seats it was certified for. The back two seats are stored in the hangar sealed in bags, don’t even have belts for them but they insist…

The coverage we ended up with still says 5 but maybe I don’t have any friends and only fly solo that should be a taken into account.

[digits]

Weird, my 6 seater has been insured for 4 spots. Even when there were 6 seats in it. I told them twice because I thought it was an error, but they didn't care.