Well, it's that time of year again when I have to send in my application to renew my aircraft insurance. I've been using AOPA as my agent, who has used Starr Aviation as the underwriter for the past few years for my Cessna 180. I've heard that there are group insurance policies available for some aircraft types (Grumman Tiger comes to mind) that seem to have very reasonable rates, but I've never heard if there is such a thing for Skywagons. Anyone heard of a group policy for 180's?

Give Bill White Insurance a call - I moved my 180 policy to them after AUA went tits up and was pleased with the quote they came up with for the coverage I wanted.

http://www.bwhiteinsurance.com/aviation-insurance/national-cessna-180-185-program/

x 2 for Bill White. I had lots of Cessna taildragger time but zero high performance or 180 time, but got what I considered a very reasonable price for coverage and only a "180 checkout" required-- so an hour vs 5 or 10 or however many hours of dual.
Full coverage, $65K hull value, $1143. My previous broker was about a hundred bucks more, plus x amount of dual required. BTW Avemco was about $2K

If you contact a broker other than the one you have been working with, you will have to "fire" your current broker to get a quote from another broker.

Basically, the underwriters (and they're the ones who actually insure, not the broker) don't want a half dozen brokers requesting quotes on the same policy. So, a good broker will "shop the market" on your behalf, then add his/her fees, and quote a rate for you.

The only way you can get two quotes is to request a quote from a broker (like White or Falcon, etc) as in ONE quote, and then request a quote from AVEMCO. AVEMCO is a direct underwriter, so they quote direct---no brokers.

Finally, if you do this (get a quote from a broker and one from AVEMCO) be sure to compare coverages exactly. It's easy to get two very different coverages if you don't ask for duplicate policies exactly. Compare apples to apples.

Thinking about flying to Alaska? Better make sure you're covered, and not just south of N 60. Landing off airport? Better make certain you're covered there. Forget to complete a flight review/medical/annual right on time and have an accident? Are you covered. Granted, we all believe we'd never be dumb enough to let our medical/annual/flight review lapse, but people do all the time.

My policy covers all those and more.

Make certain limits of coverage are identical, that coverages are the same, that deductibles are the same, etc.

Point is, it's really easy to wind up comparing apples to oranges.

MTV

Do you have to be a skywagon driver to work with Bill White?

soyAnarchisto wrote:Do you have to be a skywagon driver to work with Bill White?

Nope, I had my supercub insured through them.

mtv wrote: If you contact a broker other than the one you have been working with, you will have to "fire" your current broker to get a quote from another broker.......

You can get around this by not giving them the tail number. In my case, I hadn't yet purchased the airplane, so I told them I didn't know the number (even though I did).
Getting a lower price from Bill White than from the broker I had worked with before (Regal in Hillsboro OR)proves that all brokers will not necessarily be quoting the same price for the same coverage, even though they all work with the same underwriters.

hotrod180 wrote:

mtv wrote: If you contact a broker other than the one you have been working with, you will have to "fire" your current broker to get a quote from another broker.......

You can get around this by not giving them the tail number. In my case, I hadn't yet purchased the airplane, so I told them I didn't know the number (even though I did).
Getting a lower price from Bill White than from the broker I had worked with before (Regal in Hillsboro OR)proves that all brokers will not necessarily be quoting the same price for the same coverage, even though they all work with the same underwriters.

Congratulations on getting by with that. Maybe.....

Of course, if you lie to your broker, I suppose you won't mind too much if your broker fails to follow up on any claims......

Really?

Gotta love the internet.

MTV

I ended up going with AOPA this year. They had good prices this year and I trust thier product.

mtv wrote:.............Congratulations on getting by with that. Maybe.....
Of course, if you lie to your broker, I suppose you won't mind too much if your broker fails to follow up on any claims......
Really?
Gotta love the internet.
MTV

There's "lies" ( as in little white), and then there's lies. It's not like I lied about my hours, ratings, etc to get a lower price-- I asked for a quote on a generic Cessna 180 with a hull value of $XX. All three outfits I contacted seemed OK with that. If a tail number was required for a quote, I'm sure I would have been told so.

hotrod180 wrote:You can get around this by not giving them the tail number. In my case, I hadn't yet purchased the airplane, so I told them I didn't know the number (even though I did).
Getting a lower price from Bill White than from the broker I had worked with before (Regal in Hillsboro OR)proves that all brokers will not necessarily be quoting the same price for the same coverage, even though they all work with the same underwriters.

Good idea. Beat them at their own game!

mtv wrote:
Congratulations on getting by with that. Maybe.....

Of course, if you lie to your broker, I suppose you won't mind too much if your broker fails to follow up on any claims......

Really?

Gotta love the internet.

MTV

Really?!? Lawl