Does being over MTOW invalidate your insurance?

It probably depends on how egregious it is. A passenger underestimated their weight? I’d have to imagine insurance would still pay, especially if the crash had nothing with the plane being 5lbs over MTOW. The guy who took off with Barton when 400lbs overweight in a Cherokee 140? He was probably on a sticky wicket.

If insurance was automatically invalidated because a flight had something illegal about it, then insurance would not pay out for a large proportion of crashes. If you think of it, many crashes occur because someone did something that could be deemed illegal (e.g. manuevering crash – “endangerment of an aircraft”, the catch all; running out of fuel which is quite a common cause of engine stoppage; many minor deviations that occur on nearly every flight that are technical illegalities). After all, a big part of insurance is covering you for liability when you do something wrong. Motoring insurance, after all, isn’t invalidated when you go 31 mph in a 30 limit despite it being an offence, and still pays out in cases where drivers get convicted of dangerous driving.

It would be interesting to know if the insurance paid out in the Barton Birdwatcher case.

Not easy to answer because most of such cases are settled outside of courts and therefore outside of public. In addition it depends significantly on your legal system and your insurance contract.

In Germany the general opinion seems to be that the insurance contract is not invalidated per se. If you knew (or should have known), however, that you are over MTOW and the overweight has been a contributing factor either to the accident itself or to the size of the damage the insurer would not pay (or in case of third party liability pay and claim the money back from you).

The higher the overweight is, the more likely it is that the court will put the burden of proof that it did not contribute to the damage on your shoulder.

ok, one more lawyer’s popcorn thread…

I suggest a peek into one’s insurance contract should answer that question… or a quick use of the search engine, result: Depending on the level of negligence and the type of damage, your insurance policy might still pay a claim if it occurs because of your negligence.

Graham wrote:

Say you load in excess of MTOW then you take off and crash.

Is you insurance automatically invalidated because the flight was illegal, or invalidated if it’s shown that the crash was due to being overloaded, or still valid regardless?

I think if they find some calculations somewhere after the crash (on paper or on-line) for the flight in question and it is obvious that you have done your due dilligence and just made a mistake, then I presume the insurance to be paid out. If there are no calcs or the calcs clearly show that the flight is not legal, then I’m not so sure!

Dan wrote:

ok, one more lawyer’s popcorn thread

One thing you will find is that most of us pilots, we really suck on legal matters, most people have technical backgrounds or do other stuff in their living, we really lack good “aviation lawyers” in EuroGA

Some will go read EU law/AIP info and will make their mind, some will say what this pilot or that instructor told them, some think intersection of laws is legally binding, some think the union of laws is legally binding, some pick & cherry between legal systems…

The usual endless mix (legal, safe, insurance), I once asked if I can land DA40 in the beach and how to factor sand in POH takeoff performance, a pure technical question, I was not asking if it’s legal? safe? insurance? but I got the full pack, forgot to mention it was for Barra Beach Int Airport

arj1 wrote:

I think if they find some calculations somewhere after the crash (on paper or on-line) for the flight in question and it is obvious that you have done your due dilligence and just made a mistake,

The cases where you were a) far enough over MTOW that in hindsight it can be proven™ in a legal sense that you actually have been and at the same time b) applied due dilligence in planning might be a very small if not empty set.

If you are overweight by 5kg, they will never be able to prove that you really have been overweight. If it is 60kg (in a typical SEP), one would argue that due diligence includes not blindly believing the result of an Excel-table but also cross checking it with rough rules of thumb that should have told you that the result can’t be true

Malibuflyer wrote:

arj1 wrote: I think if they find some calculations somewhere after the crash (on paper or on-line) for the flight in question and it is obvious that you have done your due dilligence and just made a mistake,

The cases where you were a) far enough over MTOW that in hindsight it can be proven™ in a legal sense that you actually have been and at the same time b) applied due dilligence in planning might be a very small if not empty set.

If you are overweight by 5kg, they will never be able to prove that you really have been overweight. If it is 60kg (in a typical SEP), one would argue that due diligence includes not blindly believing the result of an Excel-table but also cross checking it with rough rules of thumb that should have told you that the result can’t be true

What I mean was if you do a math on paper and make arithmetic error, or if you put “60” pounds instead of “160” pound, then it might show you’ve made a mistake. With spreadsheets – not sure, depends again on the type of error. If you have 60lbs in the calculation cells and 160lbs in the comments section, then again it is a mistake.
But if you have a piece of paper which says “100kg over MTOW. Ah… F$(£ it, will fly anyway”, that is a different story. :)

I think for that very reason the commercial operators check and recheck it twice…

Ibra wrote:

forgot to mention it was for Barra Beach Int Airport

Forget Barra… try Sollas instead, way quieter, no PPR, machine and nature… but better check the tides first

PS
Ooops, forgot to mention, no published IFR approach, not recommend for autoland, but no problem if VFR circling to a visual landing, break off early enough
Picture taken in July 2019… bC19

That is nice, (joke) how did you legally justify runway length for takeoff with sand & salt on wheels, I have not seen this in CAA leaflets ?