Insurance and FBO policy

[Danos]

Does a school's or F.B.O's policy reflect its safety record in any way? Many if not all of the rules are insurance driven right? Say school X has a 15 hour complex minimum before you can do a normal solo checkout, and school Y won't even let you solo their retractable. Would the restriction reflect a prior accident or incidednt? Or could it just be that they're just tight about it? It would lead me to believe that it would be something in the schools history. Doesn't make sense for one place to chose to impose such an undesireable rule when they're in competittion with the one across the field.

 

[tonycondon]

could also mean that they just dont shop around or poke at their insurance rep enough. some fbos just seem willing to take whatever willy nilly silly restriction the insurance company will place on them, all at the detriment to their business.

 

[Ed Guthrie]

could also mean that they just dont shop around or poke at their insurance rep enough. some fbos just seem willing to take whatever willy nilly silly restriction the insurance company will place on them, all at the detriment to their business.

Or it could be that the FBO did shop around and have better market analysis skills than the folks across the field. For example, the FBO determines that it will cost $5k to insure a Mooney if no solo flight is allowed, but $15k if solo flight is allowed. They also deterimne that the plane will only rent ~100/hours per year solo. Quick math tells the FBO that the solo flights would need to be billed at $100/aircraft hour more than the dual flights in order to defray the increased insurance cost for solo activiteis--which obvioulsy just dosen't pay. If there is enough dual flight demand I could understand the FBO simply disallowing solo flight and opting to save $10k/year.

 

[tonycondon]

true ed but in a lot of cases the fact that aircraft are rented dual only make many people just not bother.

 

[poadeleted20]

It could reflect the school's history (a history of claims can affect premium price due to perceived increased risk) or, as discussed above, just a cost/benefit analysis.

 

[Ed Guthrie]

true ed but in a lot of cases the fact that aircraft are rented dual only make many people just not bother.

Even when available for solo flight, many complex aircraft simply don't rent a whole lot other than training flights for complex endorsements and commercial certificates. The Mooney M20C that I rented for several years way back when didn't fly solo unless I was in it, despite being readily available at a fairly active flight school in a large metropolitan area at a very reasonable price--the 100 solo hours/year I quoted above would have been highly optimistic for that aircraft, yet it flew several hundred hours per year dual.