"Dude" wrote in message
...

Whoa, I didn't complain about the amount, only that the differences in the
rates seem arcane on the customer end. They are happy to explain different
rates for pilot skills, but turn into a black box when it comes to
explaining the difference in planes.

If you read some of Collins' safety articles in Flying every so often some
very interesting numbers come out. I recall one article where he was
comparing night accident rates across Mooney, Piper, Cessna, and Beech
retracts. IIRC, the accident rates for Mooneys was significantly lower--like
half as much--as the others. I may be wrong on the type but there was
definitely a big difference. Now, why might this be true? Who knows. But
it's hard to ignore, and there are many similar situations where
seemingly-similar planes expose non-trivial differences in accident rates.
Underwriting small fleets with widely-varying operator types under these
circumstances is going to be as much art as science. Since there's very
little transparency as to how they work, I can't really comment on their
methods. Since they stay in business I have to assume they are doing
something right.

Again, a good point. What a want to know is how many years?

I'd guess ten as a minimum. Just my WAG. Of course a blip of bad accidents
in six months would be all it takes to send things through the roof.

How many
dollars? What's the correlation? I have heard lots of people saying
premiums equals claims. However, we are never allowed to see claims data.
USAA used to publish a document that gave you a good idea about claims
levels betweens models of cars. They stopped though, and I want it back,
and I want it for planes!

These are trade secrets, so I suspect you won't see too much of the
internals. Look around here and you'll see plenty of stories of people
receiving widely-varying quotes from different insurers. This tells me that
there are meaningful differences in how each insurer handicaps the risk.
Again, I suspect they run a bunch of numbers and then apply some fancy
guesswork and prejudice.

Not so at all. Many insurers balked at ANY coverage for some of the
composite planes for a good while. Then, they charged enormous rates
without really having any reason other than "lack of claims data". To me,
this fails to hit the mark because the rates they charge now do not seem
to
correlate with incidents as it is.

Again, are we talking about the Cirrus? Because if we are I'm going to say
that I sympathize with the evil insurance companies a little. Here's a plane
that has a lever that you pull. The pilot looks at it and sees a label that
reads, "Save your ass." The insurer looks at it and sees it marked, "total
the airplane." In the past, saving your ass generally meant saving the
airplane too. Now it doesn't. Who knows what is going to happen? So it
doesn't surprise me that it took a few years for the market to work this
problem through.

Also, your example is not the best. Let's take a look at a different one.

A new 200k 172 costs about 14k per year for a school. An older model
which
costs a quarter of that is about 5k. Repairs on the two models cost
nearly
the same. I suspect the new ones have less incidents because they likely
have fewer incidents due to malfunction ON AVERAGE. (please spare me the
new plane problem stories).

Uh, not sure what you're trying to prove here. The new plane costs 4x as
much to buy, and 3x as much to insure. If the newer planes do indeed have
fewer incidents for whatever reason then this makes sense.

As for your car situation, Boston is a historical and lovely place. Too
bad
about your government, Komrade.

It could be worse--my sister lives in Berkeley. Also a lovely place but it
makes Boston look like Houston by comparison.

-cwk.