How much can one expect to pay for a/c insurance?

[InTheAir]

How much can one roughly expect to pay for insuring a light aircraft?

- The A/C will be used by 10 group members. Each member has a minimum of 100 hours, 20 on type.

- Type: PA-28-161 (1988) (bog standard)

- Based in South East England

- Tied down / not hangared.

- liability £1,000,000

Thanks

[Formally Known As]

About 5% of the hull value per year.

[Global Pilot]

Give GAB Robbins a call. They will ballpark you over the phone. Fill in a few pages of paperwork and they will give a real quote without commitment.

[pbloore]

Our Siai (similar to an Arrow I) is insured via Hall & Clarke Insurance brokers (02089085611) for £1M TPL named pilots only (up to 20 I think) for approx £1900 pa.

I've found them very professional and helpful when changing the pilots listed or the cover - new documents come through by the next post or if in a hurry they'll fax them.

Regards

Paul :-)

[IO540]

Call Haywards - many brokers go through them anyway.

Probably £1500-£2000 plus insurance for the hull value.

You will need more liability than £1M if you want to go to certain places or countries.

But don't ask too many brokers because there are only about 4 insurers in this business, and if any insurer gets a request for quote from more than one broker, the first broker to get in gets a monopoly on that particular aircraft reg for 30 days (so I've been told). So if you are getting quotes from multiple brokers, ask them first which underwriters they use. The underwriters really hate multiple enquiries because it looks like you are shopping around.

[QNH 1013]

"the underwriters hate multiple enquiries because it looks like you are shopping around".

Yes I agree with you that they do seem to hate you shopping around, but at these sorts of premiums (£1000 plus) you would be a fool not to shop around.

[IO540]

QNH

I agree 200% but it is very easy to email an enquiry to 10 brokers (like you would do for your car) and find that you get 3 quotes which are useless, and the insurance market has cut you out of getting any others for at least a month and probably a lot longer.

Why would the quotes be useless? One example is that you may have four pilots. A smart broker will try to recommend that they are named pilots; that's the cheapest option. A dumb one will just tell the underwriter to quote for Club Use which is some 50% more. The chance is that the broker won't read (or understand) half the stuff in your enquiry, or if he isn't clear about what you want (because you aren't for example) he may not contact you to clarify it. So you can get pretty useless quotes; very high, or simply for the wrong sort of usage. And if a particular underwriter has quoted on G-ABCD for Club Use (because the broker asked him for that) and a week later he gets an enquiry for G-ABCD from another broker for 4 named pilots only, he will think "this operator is really renting it out and he wants to sail close to the wind, and I am going to get shafted on the risk". Also these people often know each other and the word gets around quick.

That's why, when contacting brokers for insurance quotes, one must FIRST ask them WHERE they are going to place the business.

Incidentally, emailed enquiries are generally not treated seriously in this very old fashioned branch of insurance.

Ultimately, for the same cover there won't be much of a difference. If somebody quotes a much lower premium, it is VERY LIKELY because the information he is working on isn't the same as the others had in front of them. Which is fine until you claim.

It is important to make full and accurate disclosure of the intended use. Aviation insurance isn't legally mandatory (except in certain situations) and if one isn't covered because of a cockup somewhere along the long line of communication, you have wasted a few grand a year, and you won't realise until you claim.

[Pianorak]

Incidentally, emailed enquiries are generally not treated seriously in this very old fashioned branch of insurance.
Seems to apply to aircraft sellers as well. Have sent email enquiries to various vendors without a single reply. It seems fifty grand isn’t much and of no interest whatsoever. Oh well, shall continue renting – probably cheaper in the long run.

[IO540]

I think that's because very few real people actually use email - despite press hype that 6,333,555,228,654 people use the internet :O

I seriously doubt more than 1% of active PPL population ever read the stuff on here.

That's why it's no good emailing somebody unless you know they know how to use email. Most "non computer geeks" either read their email once a month, and/or their mailbox is full of porn, and/or it's been closed years ago. Many people have an email address set up by a friend but they forgot how to retrieve them.

I bumped into a "non computer geek" the other day. She has caught a virus which turns her PC into a spamming machine. The moment she turns it on, the thing logs onto some website from which it downloads email addresses, and the PC sits there mailmerging spam, a few megabytes per hour. Was she aware of this? Not at all. "It seems to run a bit slowly".

Etc.

[Global Pilot]

IS540.....another post read and ignored. You can get stuff to regulate spam etc.
Insurance doesn't responsd well to email enquiries very well so if you are serious about ti and require serious quotes pick up the dog and bone or let your finger do the walking.

rgds,
GP.