Third Party Liability Insurance

[QDMQDMQDM]

I'd be interested to know people's attitudes to this. I fly a Super Cub and have £1m 3rd party liability, which costs an arm and a leg.

The problem is that this is unlikely to be enough in the event of any serious accident, and that's even excluding doing damage to anyone outside the aircraft. Many of my friends are GPs and if you kill a GP with a family in their thirties, that will cost much more than £1m, leaving one's estate open to being sued.

Of course, I don't fly with the intention of crashing and killing myself or my passenger, but it is not a game entirely without risk -- that's why the insurance costs so much -- and so these things do trouble me a little. It would be bad enough me kicking the bucket, but me doing so and leaving my wife and kids bankrupt would be even worse.

What are other people's attitudes on this? (And for those who fly a four-seat aircraft, the issue is even more significant.)

Do you not care?
Do you care, but ignore it?
Do you have loads of liability insurance?
Do you choose only 'cheap to kill' passengers?
Or is there anyone out there who has set up a limited company to own their aircraft for this very reason?

Until I have quite a few more hours, I suspect I will choose option 4.

I'd be interested to hear what others do.

Regards,

QDM

[A and C]

My attitude is that you need enough cover to not make it worthwile for eny one you hurt/kill to come after you personaly after all it would be quite easy to get £1m out of an insuance company but if a legal type on a %age tryed to get that out of me personaly he would not have much of a %age at the end of his efforts ! and so would not take on the case.

[411A]

Interesting to note that more and more private pilots in the USA are now dumping the insurance cover they had in the past...and instead are deciding to self insure, and I can't blame them.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Fair question.

I do 3 sorts of flying. First is work flying, which is covered by work insurance, although I do have what I do declared on my life insurance.

Second a light aircraft in a syndicate, we have syndicate insurance, which is very expensive.

Finally, I do a lot of private microlight flying. I don't have hull insurance on the grounds I can fly it myself. My £¼m third party, plus test flying risks, plus airshow risks, comes to a staggering £85 per year. Add another £300 for passenger risks which is about 1/3 of my annual microlight flying costs, and I'm afraid that my passengers get warned their uninsured by me.

G