Maoraigh wrote:
Is the insurance check done the same way as vehicle insurance?
I don’t think so. The CAA every so often sends me an email asking for evidence of insurance. If the insurer was telling them, they’d have no need to do that :-)
What insurance is required for a pilot to fly a) his own aircraft and b) someone else’s aircraft?
I have never known anybody with such insurance but would expect someone doing ferrying to have it. So I asked an experienced bizjet and ferry pilot and he’s not heard of it either. The plane itself is always insured, for a suitably licensed pilot.
In the car world it is possible, of course.
The airplane has to have insurance against 3rd party liability and passanger liability. The policy might be valid only for the owner (usually cheapest), for list of named pilots or for all pilots who met specified criteria (in my case for example its "at least 100hour experience ).
So if the other plane is insured only for the owner or pilots in the policy and you are not on the list, its not legal to fly it.
I have a basic question and I’m sorry for asking, but I couldn’t grasp it from the PDF that was linked.
What insurance is required for a pilot to fly a) his own aircraft and b) someone else’s aircraft?
Is the insurance check done the same way as vehicle insurance?
Insurance companies inform the CAA. Only if active reg and no information need the CAA check. Does G-INFO say something more than just the required amount?
That is odd. I’m always sceptical of the bystander “the aircraft looked like it was going to crash.” I assume it’s the same incident as the low flying without a licence: maybe the owner was recognised and sitting in the back? Judging by the fines, flying without insurance is 13 times more serious than flying without a licence. Are there type ratings for helicopters then? Obviously you can’t get the full story from a paragraph, but it’s still odd.
I bet that is a common situation, albeit people rarely get caught for doing it. Quite a lot of PPLs fly with someone in the RHS who has an IR and who can take over if the wx gets too bad. In most cases this RH person is not insured. I guess in this case something happened (an accident?) which drew attention to the flight.
Ah, found the prosecution of a private flight for no insurance – see page 3 of https://www.caa.co.uk/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294970653 – owner was fined £3.3k. Bit of an odd case, owner was insured, but he was the only person insured to fly the aircraft, but he was a passenger.
Seems also airfields can ask for specific insurance requirements to visiting aircraft (apart from what you see in EASA texts), not sure about the legality of it but if that is listed in some Part-XXX or Aerodrome manual/license then you are probably bound to it?
Duxford during airshows do insist on visiting aircraft to have a xyzSDR minimum cover amount, they will check that on the day and may kick you out 
The only one in there I saw was a commercial balloon operator who didn’t merely just fly (presumably fare paying passengers) without insurance, but also sent the CAA forged certificates. He got 9 months in prison for his troubles plus an additional suspended sentence.
