Justin Gombos wrote in
news:tZwmi.854$s25.809@trndny04:

On 2007-07-15, Marty Shapiro wrote:

How do you propose for the insurance company, assuming they
did issue a "weekend only" policy, account for the higher risk
caused by the well known, and sometimes fatal, ailment, gethomeitis?
A "weekend only" policy could easily cause increased incidents of
gethomeitis to flare up. If you are running late Sunday evening and
won't be home before midnight do you plan to land and wait until the
next Saturday to retrieve your aircraft or will you be tempted to
fly just slightly into Monday so you can get home, put your airplane
away, and get to work Monday morning? If the weather becomes
marginal, will you be tempted to push it to arrive Sunday rather
than wait for the severe clear predicted for Monday? This could
easily make for a signficantly higher premium for a "weekend only"
policy.

In some cases, the risk will be less, and more in other cases. The
question is, if an unsafe pilot excercises poor judgement and violates
the weather minimums mandated by the FAR, is the insurance company
liable for the claim? If not, then the risk is actually less. Or
suppose a safe pilot decides to wait until Monday and fly without
insurance (is that legal?), the insurance company is 100% off the hook
for the risk associated with the return trip, which would again be
less net risk. For the gray area, where the weather is legally safe
but on the edge, and the pilot accepts it in light of an expectation
of better weather later, is that risk great enough to more than offset
the reduced risk cases? Perhaps.. and then the next question is
whether it's great enough to completely offset the reduced risk flying
significantly fewer hours. I doubt it because the FAR weather
minimums are adequite a majority of the time, and would have been
stricter if marginal conditions posed a significant danger. OTOH, you
may be right on the money. Good point.

We can also figure that a daily pilot is going to get trapped by the
weather more frequently.. so we would really need some stats to make
that comparison. Since this is a hypothetical policy anyway, we could
always include Monday in the weekend policy and increase the premium
so weekenders have an extra day to further mitigate this type of
issue.


At what time did the airplane crash? Suppose someone crashes at 11:00
PM Sunday while flying in a sparsely populated where there is no radar
coverage. Wreckage is found Monday morning at 6 AM. Does the weekend
policy cover this crash? Before you answer, remember that there are no
witnesses to the crash nor any radar tapes to confirm when the airccraft
disappeared.

The important thing is that such a policy puts pressure on the pilot
to complete the flight by midnight Sunday or fly without insurance
coverage the next day. That has been shown to be the cause of gethomeitis
(or, when outbound, getthereitis). The weather might be VFR, but is it at
the pilot's personal comfort level? Would the pilot feel the pressure to
fly if it is below his comfort level even though legal? Does the weekend
IFR rated pilot really feel comfortable shooting the approach to minimums
when it has been maybe years since he had to do so, even though he is
legally current? If not, that pilot is more prone to make mistakes than
the pilot who flies much more frequently or even daily.

BTW, the legality of the flight has absolutely nothing to due with
insurance coverage. Unlike the state DMV, the FAA does not require
insurance to register an aircraft or exercise pilot privileges.

The daily pilot doesn't worry about being trapped by the weather. He
just waits until the next day. He doesn't have the pressure of having to
wait until the next weekend. The weekend policy tells the pilot that if he
doesn't get home by midnight Sunday, he is going to either miss an entire
week's work or fly without insurance coverage. The daily pilot will miss
maybe half a days work if Monday morning is clear and he is only two or
three hours away from his destination. The daily pilot has both more
experience and less pressure to complete the flight on Sunday than the
weekend pilot.

If you start making the policy good through Monday, then you just
moved the problem from Sunday night to Monday night. Care to go for
Tuesday? Might as well go for all seven days and be done with it. If the
weekend pilot is willing to fly Monday with no insurance coverage, why does
he even bother with insurance at all, especially if he is not flying every
weekend. Just get "hull not in motion" coverage to protect against ground
damage caused by someone else while the aircraft is parked in its tie down.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)