Insuring a Columbia 400 & weekend only insurance

On 2007-07-13, Robert M. Gary wrote:
On Jul 11, 7:09 pm, Justin Gombos
wrote:

I'm figuring air time to be directly proportional to risk.

Inverse. The more you fly the lower your insurance rates. A guy who
only occassionally flys on the weekend is quite a large risk
compared to the semi-pro filying day in and day out.

Just to clarify, I'm not talking risk per hour, but rather net risk
per annum. If air time were inversely proportional to risk (which is
what others have suggested), then you could expect 730 days of
insurance coverage to cost less than 365 days of coverage. That logic
can take us as far as yielding a lifetime of insurance for less than 1
year of premium. It's *net* risk and *net* cost that's relevent here.
If the insurance market were sufficiently saturated with competition,
insuring 150 days would cost a pilot more per unit time than 365 days,
but the net per annum would be *less*.

--
PM instructions: caesar cipher the alpha chars in my addy (key = +3).

On 2007-07-14, Ben Jackson wrote:

If you rent it, your insurance will skyrocket. If you add a few
named insured, the cost will only change by going up to whatever the
least experienced pilot's rate would be. However, there will
probably be a limit to how many you can add.

That's reasonable. What about the case of renting the plane only to
those who are listed on the policy (since they are not partial
owners)? I wouldn't need the insurance to cover walk-in pilots who
aren't listed, because it would probably only be a few people
involved.

--
PM instructions: caesar cipher the alpha chars in my addy (key = +3).

Your 'logic' as to why your premiums might be lower notwithstanding,
someone is going to write the policy, and it most likely won't be a
reader of this newsgroup. Why not ask the real experts, those who
actually write policies?

I am pretty sure no one here with the resources to do so would be
willing to accept the 'bet' you are proposing -- ie, that as a not
very frequent pilot your exposure is less and therefore so also should
be your premium.

This reminds a little of some of the threads involving MX: the likely
answers are offered to you, you're offering counterarguments. That's a
lot like arguing with a clerk in a store who does not have the power,
authority, or even interest to change policy, one needs to talk to a
manager to do that.

The 'managers' in this case are those who write policies. What have
they told you? If you find the offers made to you as unacceptable,
this is not a search for information but a rant. Rants are OK but
don't call it anything else.

If you haven't asked a broker, someone who has real information and
the authority to write policies, I'd have to wonder about your
motiviations.

TIna

..,






On Jul 15, 1:01 pm, Justin Gombos
wrote:
On 2007-07-13, Robert M. Gary wrote:

On Jul 11, 7:09 pm, Justin Gombos
wrote:

I'm figuring air time to be directly proportional to risk.

Inverse. The more you fly the lower your insurance rates. A guy who
only occassionally flys on the weekend is quite a large risk
compared to the semi-pro filying day in and day out.

Just to clarify, I'm not talking risk per hour, but rather net risk
per annum. If air time were inversely proportional to risk (which is
what others have suggested), then you could expect 730 days of
insurance coverage to cost less than 365 days of coverage. That logic
can take us as far as yielding a lifetime of insurance for less than 1
year of premium. It's *net* risk and *net* cost that's relevent here.
If the insurance market were sufficiently saturated with competition,
insuring 150 days would cost a pilot more per unit time than 365 days,
but the net per annum would be *less*.

--
PM instructions: caesar cipher the alpha chars in my addy (key = +3).

On 2007-07-15, Tina wrote:

If you haven't asked a broker, someone who has real information and
the authority to write policies, I'd have to wonder about your
motiviations.

The motivation became academic. Initially I asked if a weekend policy
existed. The answer was (probably correctly) 'no', but it came with
seemingly faulty reason as to why it would not exist. It was either
faulty reasoning.. or there was some factor that I was not accounting
for. So digging deeper was a useful activity academically; figuring
that someone will eventually post a reasonable and more interesting
explanation. Among other things, I discovered from some of the info
that folks here provided that there are only nine insurance providers.
I still do not accept the line reasoning that more flying = lower net
risk. Which means if market conditions were to improve for the
consumer, then a weekend policy could become reality (at least as far
as we know based on points raised in this thread so far).

I will eventually talk to a broker, who will have a different but not
necessarily more complete slant of things - along with the biases of a
broker. IOW, if there were a weekend policy for which a broker wasn't
offering, then I wouldn't expect to hear about it from the broker who
wants to sell me only what they have to offer.. which is in part why
usenet was my first stop.

BTW, I appreciate all the feedback you've provided in this thread.
It's been quite helpful.

--
PM instructions: caesar cipher the alpha chars in my addy (key = +3).

On 2007-07-15, Tina wrote:

This reminds a little of some of the threads involving MX: the
likely answers are offered to you, you're offering
counterarguments. That's a lot like arguing with a clerk in a store
who does not have the power, authority, or even interest to change
policy, one needs to talk to a manager to do that.

I haven't read his posts yet. But arguing isn't necessarily ranting.
Disclosure of the best information is often provoked by good
arguments. So it can be a form of data mining. Unfortunately, not
everyone argues constructively, which can cloud the more interesting
part of the discussion.

--
PM instructions: caesar cipher the alpha chars in my addy (key = +3).

"Tina" wrote

This reminds a little of some of the threads involving MX: the likely
answers are offered to you, you're offering counterarguments.

See, Justin? I'm not the only one that thinks you are sounding like a
troll.

Another question; are you this dense about everything? (not you, Tina)
--
Jim in NC

On 2007-07-15, Tina wrote:

I am pretty sure no one here with the resources to do so would be
willing to accept the 'bet' you are proposing -- ie, that as a not
very frequent pilot your exposure is less and therefore so also
should be your premium.

Consider this: Two pilots with identical histories apply for
insurance. Pilot A plans to fly 50 hours this upcoming policy period,
and pilot B plans to fly 500 hours. The first 50 hours that pilot B
flies are just as risky(*) as all the hours from pilot A, but pilot B
still has 450 hours to go. Although the risk is lower on those 450
hours, none of them are risk-free (and in order for pilot B to have a
lower net risk than A, those 450 hours would have to be a negative
risk).

(*) There is one difference between A's 50 hours and B's initial 50
hours: A's hours are potentially more sparse. However sparsity is (or
certainly can be) accounted for. Apparently Mr. Barrow's insurer asks
him for a number of hours per unit time as a part of his quote. It
can also be estimated from the history. So the pilot already pays a
price for having sparsely distributed hours. Thus, charging those
pilots for a very significant amount of unused time results in a
secondary penalty - but it makes sense for insurers to do this when
there's not enough competitive pressure not to.

I also claim that there is a sweet spot for optimum sparsity. Pilots
can forget things when the hours are too sparse; and when the hours
are extremely dense, the pilot has not had an ideal amount of time to
process what they've experienced (which is comparable to students who
cram to get through an exam and forget the material shortly after). I
suspect a pilot who takes short flights daily is closer to the
sparsity sweet spot than a weekly pilot, but it's already been
accounted for in the base premium anyway, before any sort of
weekend-only discount would be applied.

--
PM instructions: caesar cipher the alpha chars in my addy (key = +3).

Justin Gombos wrote in
news:CFvmi.3735$Gx5.684@trndny02:

On 2007-07-15, Tina wrote:

I am pretty sure no one here with the resources to do so would be
willing to accept the 'bet' you are proposing -- ie, that as a not
very frequent pilot your exposure is less and therefore so also
should be your premium.

Consider this: Two pilots with identical histories apply for
insurance. Pilot A plans to fly 50 hours this upcoming policy period,
and pilot B plans to fly 500 hours. The first 50 hours that pilot B
flies are just as risky(*) as all the hours from pilot A, but pilot B
still has 450 hours to go. Although the risk is lower on those 450
hours, none of them are risk-free (and in order for pilot B to have a
lower net risk than A, those 450 hours would have to be a negative
risk).

(*) There is one difference between A's 50 hours and B's initial 50
hours: A's hours are potentially more sparse. However sparsity is (or
certainly can be) accounted for. Apparently Mr. Barrow's insurer asks
him for a number of hours per unit time as a part of his quote. It
can also be estimated from the history. So the pilot already pays a
price for having sparsely distributed hours. Thus, charging those
pilots for a very significant amount of unused time results in a
secondary penalty - but it makes sense for insurers to do this when
there's not enough competitive pressure not to.

I also claim that there is a sweet spot for optimum sparsity. Pilots
can forget things when the hours are too sparse; and when the hours
are extremely dense, the pilot has not had an ideal amount of time to
process what they've experienced (which is comparable to students who
cram to get through an exam and forget the material shortly after). I
suspect a pilot who takes short flights daily is closer to the
sparsity sweet spot than a weekly pilot, but it's already been
accounted for in the base premium anyway, before any sort of
weekend-only discount would be applied.


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.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)

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.

--
PM instructions: caesar cipher the alpha chars in my addy (key = +3).

"Justin Gombos" wrote

Consider this: Two pilots with identical histories apply for
insurance. Pilot A plans to fly 50 hours this upcoming policy period,
and pilot B plans to fly 500 hours. The first 50 hours that pilot B
flies are just as risky(*) as all the hours from pilot A, but pilot B
still has 450 hours to go. Although the risk is lower on those 450
hours, none of them are risk-free (and in order for pilot B to have a
lower net risk than A, those 450 hours would have to be a negative
risk).

Jeeze, you really are that dense.
--
Jim in NC