Is there any grounds for insurance company asking higher amount for liability insurance for twin vs single engine aircraft? What’s your experience, how much more you expect to pay for twin?
Third party liability or hull insurance?
Third party liability
I’d have to look it up, but when changing from a single to a twin I don’t recall liability insurance was higher.
What would be the argument of the insurance company?
AFAIK liability and hull insurance doesn’t vary much in the world of private GA. Whether you are CPL, IR, single or multi, the insurers don’t seem to regard it as a factor. I once tried to argue that flying a lot of VFR while having an IR certainly would diminish the risk, like not getting exposed the number one killer: VMC into IMC without an IR. They just said that having an IR will mean that you will be putting yourself in ‘riskier’ situations, so the risk does not decrease..
Using a plane for training or commercial ops has a significant impact on premiums but all the variations of private ops doesn’t, is what has stuck in my mind.
It seems that they want more money just because the aircraft is more expensive. I’m trying to explain them that this can relate to hull insurance but not to liability towards 3rd parties. My TB20 liability insurance was €1.350 while now under same conditions same inurance company is asking €2.100. A friend of mine used to pay €500 for TB20 liability insurance to other company under same conditions. When I asked for quotation I got €2.100 – my mistake was that I openly communicated previous insurance policies. This €750 of difference will not ruin me but I’m not used to deal with people with so low business moral and personal integrity.
aart wrote:
Whether you are CPL, IR, single or multi, the insurers don’t seem to regard it as a factor
In switzerland, that’s not true. My current terms say that we can have up to 5 named pilots with PPL only, but unlimited unnamed pilots with “higher” qualification (be it IR, CPL, FI, what not). And these are fairly standard terms here.
2002-2006 I used to pay GBP 6000 for “club use” which was any pilot qualified on the type (TB20). This then dropped for GBP 3000 for just me flying, and then dropped to GBP 2500 for CPL + 500hrs (and just me). Since then it has been up and down a bit and is now GBP 2700 (CPL + 2000hrs but they don’t care above 500hrs AFAICT). This is with Haywards. GBP 195k hull value.
You can see that if you rent your plane out, you have to do a fair bit of business just to recover the extra insurance. Named pilots are cheaper but then you are exposed to some taxation issues… all this was years ago now and I would never do it again.
Peter wrote:
Named pilots are cheaper but then you are exposed to some taxation issues
What are the taxation issues with named pilots? I can’t see any…
In brief, you lose the chief defence to an attack under Benefit in Kind which is that the aircraft is made available to any outsider at the same rate you are paying. That defence however has been vigorously attacked by the Revenue here… not legally but they harrass you for a year or two and eventually you give up.
Sounds illogical to me. It’s not that one cannot change the named pilots, we have done so quite frequently. But then again tax law is seldom logical 8-) And this seems to be mostly a UK problem
