Another Cirrus BRS deployment:

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

So what? None of the things you've mentioned have anything to do with how
the installation of a BRS would affect the economics of insurance a
particular airplane.

What I am saying is that before this weekend, the accident rate for the
Cirrus was already higher than expected in comparison to airplanes with
similar missions -- there was a good article about this recently in Aviation
Consumer. Now that there have been 2 more accidents in a fleet of only
1,000 we can be sure the underwriters will seriously take a look at the
numbers again and will not be likely to consider the statistics to be an
abberation.

Suppose it were the case that no one is injured in any BRS accidents but a
trend is noticed that pilots with a BRS tend to be conservative and pull the
chute in situations felt after-the-fact to be recoverable. In that case,
liability rates for a Cirrus might go down but hull rates could go up. If
hull insurance already costs more than liability for a Cirrus-class airplane
and liability insurance cannot go down to zero, the net effet of increased
hull insurance and some decrease in liability could well mean a substantial
increase in insurance costs for Cirrus owners.

Again, I certainly do not know for sure that this will occur... it is a
plausible scenario, though, based on the existing accident record of the
Cirrus. Only time will say for sure how this turns out.

--------------------
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com

"Richard Kaplan" writes:

Suppose it were the case that no one is injured in any BRS accidents but a
trend is noticed that pilots with a BRS tend to be conservative and pull the
chute in situations felt after-the-fact to be recoverable. In that case,
liability rates for a Cirrus might go down but hull rates could go up. If

Keep in mind that, on pretty much a daily basis, pilots (and
passengers) die in situations that feel "after-the-fact to be
recoverable." This underscores the fact that just because *you* feel
a situation is recoverable clearly does not mean that the pilot in
that plane could have recovered.

Happily, the insurance market is at least *somewhat* competitive, and
the Cirrus market has great promise (as well as risk) due to the fact
that Cirrus will build more planes this year than anybody.
Underwriters are sensitive to dollar losses and ultimately will price
premiums to accommodate their payouts. If there are a lot of dollars
paid on Cirri claims, the premiums will go up. If not, competition
will bring the prices down. It is generally the case that the
underwriters don't really care *why* they have to pay (short of
egregious or illegal behavior) but only care how much and how large
the premium pool is to cover the losses.

As a Cirrus owner I've seen my insurance premiums drop by 50% and then
go up by 80% (two fatal accidents in five days last year pretty much
tapped out the pool.) It's cyclic; they get scared when there are
losses to pay, and then undercut each other on premiums when things
quiet down. As the fleet grows, the depth of the cycles flattens out.

I think we can safely say that Cirrus premiums *will* go up and they
also *will* go down. It's not static by any means.