I would like to believe that should the aircraft be issued with a CofA, should the pilot be correctly licensed, and should the aircraft have been airworthy on take off (i.e. not over mauw) then should the unthinkable happen then we can be grateful that we are insured up to hull value and x million in 3rd party liability?
Is that too naive?
How deep do they dig? What if they found a piece of paper missing from the logbook from 20 years ago, would that be a grounds not to pay out? What if the take off procedure required 1 stage of flaps, yet the flap switch was found in the UP position, would that be grounds not to pay out?
In past dealins with insurane companies (not in aviation) I have normally found them fair - My old "pitch fibre" drains (a 60's fad) collapsed a few years ago and we were worried that as it was "wear and tear" we'd have to pay for the lot to be fixed. But my insurance company stated that as we couldn't have been reasonably expected to know that these types of drains were liable to collapsing (I didn't ven know there was such a thing as Pitch Fibre drains) then they would class it as accidental damage and it only cost me fifty quid (as opposed to a share of a decent aeroplane!).....