New Planes from old companies

"Dude" wrote in message
...

Exactly my point. Did the rates for Mooney's become lower to affect the
claims differences or not?

Who the hell knows. Unlike cars, just about everyone gets a completely
unique insurance quote. Perhaps somebody ought to start a database where
pilots can put in what kind of coverage they have and what they're paying
for it to help everybody shop around.

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.


If you need ten years data, then no one will innovate. The market will
not
bear it.

Bullfeathers. It didn't stop Cirrus or Lancair, and it hasn't stopped
homebuilding, where the picture is often (for good reason) far worse than
anything certified.

Also, my ten-year estimate is to see the effects of something subtle like
airbags. Nobody buys airbags because it cuts their insurance premium. I got
ABS and LoJack on my car because I wanted to avoid accidents and get it back
in case the dirtballs stole it. The fact that these cut my insurance by
about $200/year was icing on the cake.

If the insurance companies actually came out and said that its a trade
secret, then we would all say they don't care about safety. Bad PR. It
would seem that one could stay in business more efficiently without
spending
too much to figure out the differences. Just treat all the retracts the
same except for the worse offenders. Its easy and its cheap.

The problem is that there aren't enough underwriters to foster real
competition in the market. Avemco (for example) looks at the situation and
says, "wow, if we covered retracts for 20% less than everyone else, we'd
corner the market." But then they think, "well, if we did that, everyone
else would just match our prices, and all it would mean is less money for
us." Market theory teaches that when it comes to the number of companies in
a market, "four are few, and six are many." IIRC there are three or four
major GA underwriters.

Not just the Cirrus, even Diamond. I say "even Diamond" because if you
look
at the numbers it is an over the top revolution in safety. They will show
you lots of little things they did to make their planes safer, and it
appears to work. However, lots of people from the other camps are saying
they are just lucky. At some point, it doesn't ring true to keep saying
that. Also, Lancair seems to have taken the note of Diamond's changes and
incorporated many of them, including full crash cage testing on the 400.

Again, protection-of-life features do not necessarily translate into lower
costs for insurers unless they reduce hull losses too. Perhaps these new
glass panels will make IFR easier and thus reduce the number of accidents
due to disorientation. Or maybe they'll just lure more VFR pilots into IMC
with predictable results. Time will tell. Either way, rates will not come
down without a pretty substantial reduction in accident rates and no one is
predicting that for anybody.

I
don't blame the insurers on the Cirrus at all. Its not the parachute, its
the claims. The darn things were all crashing into little bits until they
got the training regimen in place, and fixed the chutes. Now they seem to
be doing much better, and for me, another year of Cessna level accident
records will convince me.

All of which appears to justify the "new equals bad" approach of the
insurers to modern aircraft. Had insurers treated the early Cirri like
Cherokee Sixes (both have 300HP, CS prop, fixed gear, right?) they would
have taken one hell of a bath, and they likely did anyway.

Too few get totaled to justify the difference.

Hmm... how can you be so sure?

Best,
-cwk.