Some members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation asking if the country needs a law requiring all airplane owners to have liability insurance?
Currently only eleven states have such a mandate and Kansas isn’t one of them.
That committee asked the General Accountability Office, GAO, to look into it. Dr. Gerald Dillingham headed up the study and tells KAKE news, “The members of congress were interested in information. What does the liability coverage look like generally for this segment of aviation?”
Dillingham says no one really knows whether a problem exists or not. He says, “.. almost all of the general aviation community is somehow insured, the question is there’s really no available data base to indicate whether there is a problem or how much of a problem there is with regards to general liability insurance coverage.”
Randy Hardy is owner of Hardy Aviation Insurance agency in Wichita. Hardy says, “My experience has been a large portion and a majority of the general aviation community do in fact already buy insurance. If it could be measured, I would bet more GA aircraft owners, by percentage, purchase financial responsibility, through insurance, than the general public buys auto insurance. which is already mandated and required.”
The GAO study has Hardy and others in aviation concerned the government might consider legislation to fix something they say isn’t broken. Hardy says, “If the system isn’t broke then why should we fix it?”
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association says:
“As far as AOPA can determine, the GAO report did not determine that there is a problem that rises to a level that would require a federal mandate or federal legislation.”