Poor Show

[SKYYACHT]

I heard on the Radio news that Sally B, which was supposed to be performing a flypast at Southampton to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of VE Day, has had to cancel due to prohibitive insurance requirements. It appears that she has been classified in the same category as a Boeing B737, and the premium increased to over 1,000 GBP, which the organisers are unable to pay. Shame on them.

I realise that insurance cover is a legal responsibility, and that insurers are run as commercial enterprises, but surely a one off may be accommodated?

(As a side issue, I see that a Veterans March to a Town Hall has also been banned as it is too risky, and the Police cant provide the required Marshals and escorts..... Godd job they didnt consider things too risky in 1939 eh?

Tailwinds....

:*

[FlyingForFun]

What a sad post.

Several years ago, hour-building in Arizona, I visited an aircraft museum which claimed to have the largest collection of flyable WW2 and replica WW1 aircraft in existance. Until recently, they had an annual show, during which they would fly one of the WW1 aircraft and one of the WW2 aircraft. This has had to be stopped, because the insurance company will no longer insure the aircraft for a single weekend - they have to be insured for the whole year. :(

FFF
------------

[md 600 driver]

F F Fun
did you go to falcon field by any chance WOW what a selection to fly in

steve

[Johnm]

I simply don't understand why sensible exemptions can't be granted on these occasions. A wise man once told me "Rules are made for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools"

Most of our regulators these days seem to have lost their wisdom it seems....:(

[proplover]

SKYYACHT - based on the number of hours flown by Sally B per year I believe its an additional £1000 PER HOUR.

Currently its another "blanket" EU directive which doesnt take into account aircraft which only fly for a limitted number of hours per year - Sally B is in the same weight clasification as a passenger jet (737?) but unlike them does not fly fare paying passengers for hundreds\thousands of hours each year.

Scandolous that the pen pushers of Brusels seem to again have the upper hand over some simple common sense.

[A and C]

The european insurance requirments are a good idea for normal cases and do adress the long overdue requirement for ALL aircraft to have insurance and this has to be a good thing after all if an aircraft damages something then compensation has to be found.
However how else should the levels of liabilty be set ? MTOW sounds the best way to me.

The underlying issue in the case is tha the warbird industry is prevented from making the money it needs to fly such aircraft because they are not allowed to charge for joyrides or trainning because there aircraft dont have a public transport C of A.

Remove this restriction and the industry could stand on its own feet and the cowboys who sell you a £300 teeshirt and give you a free ride in an old aircraft will be driven from business by CAA inspection.

[MLS-12D]

the organisers are unable to pay. Shame on themYes, shame on them, and shame on everyone who doesn't have infinite funds.

Not really their fault, is it? :confused: They have to cover their costs, and presumably there is a de facto limit to the admission fees that they can charge.

[Johnm]

It may not be clear that Sally B already carries a responsible £25million of third party insurance the new rules require £65 million.

MTOW is a very crude measure, insurance is supposed to be about risk assessment. How does Sally B risk realistically compare with a B737 full of passengers?

She doesn't fly over major conurbations in lousy weather and has four engines of reasonable reliability and carries next to nobody!

[cubflyer]

Yes a real shame that the Brussels bureaucrats brought out this rule and our government and our CAA representatives didnt do anything about it. Well I think they did a bit as the original draft meant every aircraft had to have 60 million Euros insurance!!!

Something really needs to be done for these warbirds, otherwise there are going to be a lot more going the way of Sally B. Very few are funded by giving rides- and I dont mind buying the £300 T shirt either!! This seems to be more prevalent in the USA.

But A + C you are wrong, this is not a good idea. Because the rates are far too high.
I dont remember hearding anything about light aircraft crashing and causing lots of damage that wasnt paid for because they didnt have insurance, or enough insurance. Most people I know already had £500,000 liability insurance which was obviously enough. Maybe not enough for those parasites of society, the ambulance chasing lawyers to bother about- perhaps the new rates will get them intrested!
The new Law has seen the required insurance go up to 1.5SDRs for an aircraft between 500-1000kg which probably covers a lot of the GA fleet. This works out at about £1.2 million, but because the insurance companies refuse to work to these figures they make you take £1.5 million insurance. So now we are being insured for three times the amount most people had before, when that was obviously adequate. The amount of money paid to insurance companies was obviously adequate last year, but now more people are paying because it is compulsory, so the rates should be less to gain the same amount, but no they have gone up considerably.
So more money to the insurance companies and their brokers. Less money to go flying, so probably more crashes as people are less current because they have less money to spend on flying.

For me it might "only" be another £200 per year, ontop of an already extreemly expensive insurance, but for the warbird community it is much more. Many like Sally B operate on a shoe-string dependant mostly on vetrans and enthusiasts joining their club and donations.
Why cant the Government grant an exemption for historic aircraft, for example that theyonly pay the insurance based on 2,000kg whatever their weight.

Looking forward to Duxford this weekend, hopefully some operators have faired better and got insurance!

[Guern]

Why can't an insurer come up with a policy for this type of aircraft a bit like a classic car policy lower premiums based on type of use etc? Or is this already the case and it is just these premiums are so high as well?

With my bean counters hat on maybe a number of owners of such aircraft should consider joining forces and setting up their own captive insurance company. I won't go into all the detail here but if enough people got together the benefits include being able to access the "wholesale" insurance markets rather than "retail" insurance market so can often obtain better terms for reinsurance. and often you can insure what commercial insurers won't touch.

You need a fair chunk of cash to do this but as a group of people it might be viable.

I don't work in insurance but do have dealings with captive managers. More than happy to point people in the right direction if they want to PM me.

Apologies if this has been said before.

If anyone is interested PM me

[Confabulous]

Surely since the a/c is so old, sits idle for long periods, pilots don't have the chance to stay current on it due to the cost of running 4 PW's, ADs, reliability issues (not many A&Ps know how to maintain a B-17), fairly high insurance premiums are justified? Ok, maybe not £1000ph, but something that takes into account all these risks - although no doubt the insurers think they can line their pockets with the proceeds of a few flypasts :{ :uhoh

Confab

[A and C]

If the warbird industry could make more money it could pay the insurance.
It's time to let these guys make some money.