ForeFlight unveiled its Insurance Fair Price Tool this week, offering aircraft owners increased transparency into what the company calls “one of the most opaque financial aspects of aircraft ownership.”
Interesting app. And possibly useful to someone who has never bought insurance of any kind, much less aircraft. But it should be labelled, “For entertainment purposes only.”
The best approach to buying insurance, of any kind, is to approach agents in your local community, ask lots of questions, be forthright in your answers, and go with the one that makes the most sense to you. There are so many ramifications, what-if’s, and considerations you never thought of, that you want someone who is willing to patiently explain the landscape before you decide on a path.
Of course, for finding aviation insurance, you can’t beat spending a day or two at Airventure or SnF meeting with insurance reps, and asking questions. That’s how I found my insurer several decades ago, and even though the company has gone through a number of corporate changes, my agent is still there and always gets me a very affordable renewal rate.
I tried this out for my policy and was impressed. You upload your policy as a PDF file and Foreflight pulls the relevant data out of it. Then you answer some questions about your hours in different categories, your age, whether the aircraft is hangared and if you’ve filed a claim in the last 5 years. It shows you where your premium is in a range from low to high and whether or not you are below average, average or above average. Turns out I’m near the low end of the premiums so I’m getting a good deal. Looks like it relies on pilots uploading their policies so the more data that it has, the more accurate the result. I don’t know anyone else that is doing this but it’s long overdue. Maybe insurers will start paying attention to it. Over the 26 years that I’ve owned my airplane, my premiums have increased by 240%. Part of that is because my hull value increased significantly after a major rebuild 15 years ago but it’s still a big increase. The industry has no transparency in how it charges so this is a good effort on Foreflight’s part.