non-owner insurance question

[bushman]

My flying club has insisted that we get non-owner insurance for bodily injury and property damage. I have never gotten into aviation insurance before and was wondering which company to purchase a policy from? Also, I am not real sure of how much liability to get. $100,000 per person/$500,000 for property sounds good to me, but I have no expierence with this.

 

[tarp]

Not a recomendation by any means.

But you can start with AOPA:

www.aopaia.com

Then, there is Avemco:

www.avemco.com

And finally, you can call some brokers who will try to find you a policy out there. Usually listed as Independent Aviation Insurance Brokers.

The AOPA and Avemco products are "fillers". They count on some other policy to be there. They basically will pay the deductible for you and will help with some small details. The Avemco policy is especially displeasing because you can't seem to nail down where in the contract they will pay a liability amount above and beyond the original insurance policy. Since I dumped Avemco about 15 years ago, though, I am not the best spokesman. The Avemco and AOPA products will be cheap, though.

Good luck.

 

[Float Pilot]

Note that non-owned policies are similar to owner policies in that liability is one part of the policy and hull damage is a separate policy. I believe the liability policies are normally sublimited to no more than $100k per passenger, which in my view is not much better than no insurance at all in this litigous society. With the hull damage policy, you select the value of the aircraft you want to cover and this can get pretty pricey. Better clarify if your club wants you to carry one or both. Non-owned hull is probably not available without the liabilty policy also. There are lots of good articles in AOPA Pilot and other magazines and it might be a good idea to find these and read them if you're not very familiar w/ aircraft insurance. There are lots of things that may surprise the uninitiated, such as the FBO or flying club may be covered, but the insurer can then go after the pilot to recover their loss. Not pretty if you don't have coverage. Good luck.