AdamFrisch wrote:
Now, it should be said it’s $1mill smooth,
I often wondered what the adjective “smooth” means in the context of aviation insurance. Could someone pls help.
It is CSL.
A “smooth” liability limit is a combined single limit of liability for bodily injury and property damage which does not have a per passenger or per person sublimit. In other words, the entire liability limit would available to settle the claims of one or more people.
1 million is very low.
I think $1M liability is fairly typical for US light aircraft insurance, that’s the limit on my policy. It doesn’t seem to cause frequent problems, just as having no legally mandatory insurance doesn’t seem to cause problems. Fear seems to me the bigger problem, in the form of irrational risk aversion when and where it exists.
Silvaire wrote:
Fear seems to me the bigger problem, in the form of irrational risk aversion when and where it exists.
Mandatory liability insurance is not intended to protect you – it is intended to protect 3rd parties if case your pockets are not deep enough to cover damages in case of an accident.
Explaining the function of liability insurance is surely unnecessary for anybody with a brain, but regardless mandating it at an extraordinarily high level of coverage was not the result of an individual consumer choice and is instead a symptom of high levels of societal risk aversion, I suppose combined with the society also having relatively low levels of individual wealth (the two factors are not unrelated). I’ve already explained my view on that, and won’t repeat it again in the same thread 
Here in Europe it is simply mandatory, so people don’t have a choice, so whether it is easy to cause more than 1M of damage (it isn’t) is academic. But if I lived in a 1M+ house (as a large chunk of the UK and probably most pilots do) I would want to be well insured 
“whether it is easy to cause more than 1M of damage (it isn’t)”
Personal injury to a pax? Or hitting someone in an emergency landing.
Or kids get into your hangar and one falls when trying to ballance on your rudder, which lacked a " Do not try to stand on top" warning.
Look at accident cases involving kids getting through fence into building sites.
I overflew the area around Green Park in single engine while ago, I do think that flight was heavily under-insured: 10m£ liability is not even close enough to the amount of assets unde my wings, the lawyers (of important people sleeping under) would have removed my skin if anything happened…I think while “London transit” gets heavily debated by pilots, especially what CAA, AIP, SERA/NCO allows, however, for the amount of money involved in such flights it does not matter if it’s legal or illegal, the price tag would dwarf the typical GA insurer solvency reserves !
I wonder how US gets around this problem? while ago I flew Hoolywood and LA built up areas, most people have 10m$ homes and I started wondering who will pay for it?
