Philosophical question on owning & IFR rating

In article ,
kontiki wrote:
One other thing that I should have mentioned in my previous post:
The savings in lower insurance rates you will experience by having
the instrument rating will come close to paying for the cost of
the rating itself.

I'm not so sure about that. I passed a lot of insurance milestones
in my first year of ownership (including getting my instrument rating
and 100 make&model, retract, etc) and my insurance only went down about
10%. It will take years to make back the cost of the IR, but that's not
why I did it!

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

Ben Jackson wrote:
I'm not so sure about that. I passed a lot of insurance milestones
in my first year of ownership (including getting my instrument rating
and 100 make&model, retract, etc) and my insurance only went down about
10%. It will take years to make back the cost of the IR, but that's not
why I did it!


Well... I wonder what your premium what have been initially had you
purchased the plane/policy initially having the rating Vs. not having
the rating? There are different forces at work when negotiating for
a policy having an instrument rating along with "X" number of PIC hours
going in Vs. a PPL VFR only. Expecting "Y" amount of $$ reduction on
your policy premium after getting the rating is not written into the
contract.

Its a matter of pay me now or pay me more later.. its all money...
better to spend it on training initally than pay for higher premiums
and have less $$ for training and/or flying later.

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 20:56:31 GMT, kontiki
wrote:

Ben Jackson wrote:
I'm not so sure about that. I passed a lot of insurance milestones
in my first year of ownership (including getting my instrument rating
and 100 make&model, retract, etc) and my insurance only went down about
10%. It will take years to make back the cost of the IR, but that's not
why I did it!


Well... I wonder what your premium what have been initially had you
purchased the plane/policy initially having the rating Vs. not having
the rating? There are different forces at work when negotiating for
a policy having an instrument rating along with "X" number of PIC hours
going in Vs. a PPL VFR only. Expecting "Y" amount of $$ reduction on
your policy premium after getting the rating is not written into the
contract.

Its a matter of pay me now or pay me more later.. its all money...
better to spend it on training initally than pay for higher premiums
and have less $$ for training and/or flying later.

I had the same experience as Ben. My broker circulates new quotes
with my latest pilot data each year (TT, Time in type, ratings). As
long as the company has a good rating, I go wherever the rate is
cheapest. When I renewed in Spring 2002 after getting my IFR my price
dropped about 5%. Had I stayed VFR only, I believe that it would have
risen about 10% given the effects of 9/11 on GA insurance. So a gross
savings of about 15%.

-Nathan

On 27-Aug-2004, (Ben Jackson) wrote:

I'm not so sure about that. I passed a lot of insurance milestones
in my first year of ownership (including getting my instrument rating
and 100 make&model, retract, etc) and my insurance only went down about
10%. It will take years to make back the cost of the IR, but that's not
why I did it!


I think it depends to a large extent on the make/model involved. For simple
airplanes like a C-172, having an IR probably will not have much impact on
insurance rates. But on a complex, high performance plane the savings could
be substantial. This is understandable considering the relative risk: A
VFR-only pilot will be much safer scud-running in marginal VFR conditions in
a 172 than in a Bonanza.

I've been IFR rated for 30 years, but when two pilots who had not quite
finished their UFR training became partners in my Arrow, insurance went up
by about $600/year. Went back down after they got their ratings.

Getting an IR isn't cheap, but unless you fly exclusively in some place like
Arizona or Florida, it is pretty much a necessity for extracting real
transportation value (as opposed to just recreation) from an airplane.
--
-Elliott Drucker

wrote:
[snip]
Getting an IR isn't cheap, but unless you fly exclusively in some
place like
Arizona or Florida, it is pretty much a necessity for extracting real
transportation value (as opposed to just recreation) from an airplane.

Yep. To say, as some have, that the rating is not worth having for most
GA pilots ignores the most important criterion of flying: what do you
use the airplane for? If you use an airplane to travel, how useful is
it if you have to accept regular postponements for weather?

As soon as I got my PP certificate, it became obvious to me that flying
to Houston every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas was going to
*require* me to have the instrument rating. Otherwise, I could expect
to skip some trips or get stuck at Mom's house on occasion.
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM