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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) |
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