On 9 Jun 2004 16:52:47 GMT, Ian Cant
wrote:

Mike,
Thankyou for the insight, which may very well
be good advice.

However, is there not ALWAYS a conflict of interest
between insurer and insured at claim time ? Having
the SSA as a middleman would not appear to alter that
fact.

The SSA might even be encouraged to become more interested
in overall soaring safety statistics [or at least liability
claim incidents], and develop a more pro-active safety
program. That would hardly be bad for us.

The large pool might well be a captive market for the
duration of any one contract; but at renewal time,
it should also be more attractive to insurers and thus
attract competitive rates.

Am I hopelessly naive ?

Ian
Ian,

It hasn't worked that way in Oz. You can also end up with the
insurance company dictating the rules or the organisation buying the
insurance adding yet more rules over the legal minima to convince the
insurance company not to raise premiums.

Imagine the effect of your SSA disowning you or not getting involved
on the insurance company's decision to pay out.

Hvaning soaring advocacy bodies making too many rules is a really bad
idea.

Right now in Australia someone like Eric Greenwell, who as I
understand, operates a self launcher out of a trailer at an airfield
with no other soaring pilots around cannot be covered by the GFA's
third party insurance as there is a requirement for a second qualified
inspector's signature on the maintenance release for that day.

Yes, we've had a couple of accidents with controls not hooked up or
assembled backwards but what the rocket scientists in the GFA have
ignored is that at least two checks in the current rules were not done
or not done properly to get to this point. Instead of reinforcing the
need to carry out these checks properly they simply added another one
which now has the effect of putting at risk the other person's assets
etc . This will probably end after the first time someone who signs
some else's maintenance release gets sued.

Mike Borgelt